Indigenous entrepreneurship in Aotearoa New Zealand: The takarangi framework of resilience and innovation

Abstract

Purpose

Exploring the links between resilience, sustainability and entrepreneurship from an indigenous perspective means exploring the historic and socio-cultural context out of which a community originates. From this perspective, informed insight into a community’s ability to adapt and to transform without major structural collapse when confronted with exogenous challenges or crises can be gained. This paper explores the interplay between resilience and entrepreneurship in a New Zealand indigenous setting.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors provide a theoretical and case study approach, exploring four intersecting leadership roles, their guiding value system and application at a micro kin family level through a tourism venture and at a macro kin tribal level through an urban land development venture.

Findings

The findings demonstrate the importance of historical precedent and socio-cultural values in shaping the leadership matrix that addresses exogenous challenges and crises in an entrepreneurship context.

Research limitations/implications

The research is limited to New Zealand, but the findings have synergies with other indigenous entrepreneurship elsewhere. Further cross-cultural research in this field includes examining the interplay between rights and duties within indigenous communities as contributing facets to indigenous resilience and entrepreneurship.

Originality/value

This research is a contribution to theory and to indigenous community entrepreneurship in demonstrating what values and behaviours are assistive in confronting shocks, crises and challenges. Its originality is in the multi-disciplinary approach, combining economic and social anthropological, indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives. The originality of this paper also includes an analysis of contexts that appear to fall outside contemporary entrepreneurship, but are in fact directly linked.

Citation

Kawharu, M., Tapsell, P. and Woods, C. (2017), "Indigenous entrepreneurship in Aotearoa New Zealand: The takarangi framework of resilience and innovation", Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 20-38. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEC-01-2015-0010