Collaborative Patterns of Long-Term Sustainability in Community Social Enterprises: An International Comparative Case Study

Social entrepreneurship is considered an especially relevant solution to the challenges of rural development. Community social enterprises (CSEs), which engage rural residents in the production of services, are expected to empower citizens and succeed in providing services in conditions where market and public actors fail (Whitelaw, Hill 2013; von Friedrichs, Lundström 2016). Previous studies have focused commonly on the emergence of CSEs from local needs. However, it is unclear to what extent they can survive in conditions of decline in the long term and maintain their transformative social impact. Therefore, this article explores the possibilities of collaborative CSEs to both stabilise service provision and livelihoods in rural areas and, simultaneously, facilitate transformation towards more just and sustainable local economies, in short, their long-term sustainability.

The CSEs are organisations that pursue social or ecological aims with producing and selling products and services in the market (Defourny, Nyssens 2012). Recent critique in the research field proposes shifting the focus from characters of individual visionary leaders to collaborative processes (De Bruin et al. 2017). Approaching rural social enterprises (SEs) in this way may provide answers to the call, because, according to van Twuijver et al. (2020), the most typical SEs in rural areas emerge from local community collaboration. These studies on CSEs point towards the challenge of stabilising the organisations’ income and management in the long term without risking the informal participation typical of the early stages (Borzaga, Galera 2016; Salemink et al. 2017). This economic and institutional sustainability has been claimed to become increasingly contradictory with the CSEs’ transformative, political agency over time (Wallace 2005; Rossel 2015).

Therefore, collaboration seems to play a crucial role in balancing SEs aims in the long run. This article identifies context-specific and cross-regional collaborative patterns that are most relevant for the enterprises’ long-term sustainability. This study aims, on the one hand, to enhance the understanding of the internal and contextual collaborative practices, with which community economies may (not) flourish in the context of involuntary degrowth. On the other hand, the article develops the theory of social entrepreneurship as a collaborative endeavour with the Communities of Practice (CoP) approach (Wenger 2010). It answers the following questions:

What kind of patterns and trajectories of collaboration can be identified in rural community entrepreneurship?

The study draws on the qualitative, internationally comparative case study of two CSEs in North-Eastern Brandenburg, Germany, and South-Eastern Alentejo in Portugal. The research was conducted during 2019 and early 2020 with semi-standardised interviews and focused ethnography as part of an international, EU-funded network project.

This research focuses on Communities of Practice instead of place (Wenger 2008), as the focus on ‘community’ collaboration in CSE studies has been criticised for its implicitly positive and spatially uniform connotation, often not applicable beyond the Anglophone contexts (Cebotari, Mihály 2018). The CoPs are constellations of shared identities, meanings and learning trajectories emerging from joint work in shared spaces, which can include practitioners both within and beyond formal organisational boundaries. According to Kovanen (in press), studying SEs as nodes of diverse CoPs enables to expand the critical, still marginal approach to social entrepreneurship as a collaborative endeavour. The CoP approach is used here as a lens to identify and analyse practices, experiences and power relations in collaboration, defined as joint work with a minimum amount of flexibility and negotiation. The actual depth and means of ‘local community’ collaboration will be the question of empiric work.

Next, long-term sustainability and the CoP approach to collaboration in CSEs is discussed, followed by the presentation of materials and methods, and then by an overview of the results in line with the collaborative patterns identified in the cases. Finally, the results are summarised reflecting the contribution of a practice approach to the study field.

Sustainability has often been approached in the SE literature as a purely economic phenomenon. Degrowth discussion, instead, reflects the possibilities of scaling up ethical community-led solutions as an alternative system to capitalism and its growth logic (Matthies et al. 2019; Paech et al. 2019), where economic, social and ecological sustainability are strongly intertwined. Accordingly, long-term sustainability is defined here as a balance between stability and transformation. According to Paech et al. (2019), reliable service provision requires a certain continuity in the resource basis and organisational coordination, say stability, whereas too strong a stagnation in organisational procedures hinders participation and innovation (Wenger 2008: 60–61). Therefore, stability here relates to the CSEs’ ability to provide basic services, cover the costs of the operation and ensure socially sustainable working relations for diverse participants. Transformation relates to their capacity to learn and challenge mainstream unsustainable policies and developments (Wallace 2005: 84).

In degrowth debate, transformation is often understood in ecological terms, but the studies commonly overlook transformative practices related to basic service provision in the conditions of the declining population and public infrastructure. First of all, CSEs benefit strongly from institutional and civic networks in their ability to provide services and influence on politics (Borzaga, Galera 2016). In many rural areas, such dynamic networks and affluent markets are far, and institutional partners may be weak. In Whitelaw and Hill's (2013) and Haunstein's (2019) studies, for example, the public sector provided start-up support for citizen-led basic services, but could not step in for any long-term economic sustainability. The maintenance of the services remained an individual responsibility, resulting in social pressure and conflict. Capital-intensive and legally complex services require major skills and resources from participants, which are often equally rare in areas of strong depopulation. Salemink et al. (2017), for example, report on the risk of burn-out of the few strongly engaged members. Degrowth scholars usually define the desired transition as a democratic, voluntary process in opposition to the shrinking mentioned above due to austerity. However, observing community economies in actual processes of decline and slow growth may provide insights into the challenges to be tackled on the way towards just transition. To approach the challenges in more detail, this research turns to the practice approach on collaboration.

While the majority of studies on collaboration have focused on institutional relations, networks and social structures, the CoP approach enables to attend to their actual practicing. The majority of CSE studies on internal collaboration, some also relying on a practice approach (Kumpulainen, Soini 2019), have usually portrayed a dual relationship between ‘a leader’ and ‘the community’ (Kovanen in press). A successful community is often seen as consisting of a tight social structure between residents, reliant on a leader who brokers between the localities and multi-scalar networks (Richter 2017; Noack, Federwisch 2019). Leaders often have skills and expertise from outside their villages, but they may also face challenges to mobilise the residents due to previous local conflicts and the lack of mutual trust (Kasabov 2016). Described from the CoP perspective, the different practitioners in a CSE have different meanings and experiences concerning their common work, which must be first recognised and negotiated before a mutual commitment is possible. In a CoP that is open for transformation, newcomers are able to follow an inclusive learning trajectory and become influential experts and leaders themselves. Such transformative trajectories are not, however, universally accessible, but depend on the participants’ capacities and institutional power to negotiate existing norms and make space for new practices (Roberts 2006: 627; Houtbeckers 2017).

Practitioners may also struggle in relation to the public sector and market competition. This can be approached with the concept of reified practices, resembling Vallance et al.'s (2011) conception of ‘maintenance sustainability’. According to Kleinhans (2017), for example, the public sector discursively supported collaboration with CSEs, but as their actual governance and funding principles were reified and not adaptable to the CSEs’ needs, they rather stagnated the dependence of the initiatives from powerful institutions. The CSEs aim at overcoming such reification by spreading and upscaling their innovative practices in their collaboration with established institutions. Here, this spreading is approached with the concept of patterns. Patterns are chains of practices, which spread out to different contexts and can be recognised in each, although the actual practices within them vary from context to context (Wenger 2008: 131–133). It helps to discover the spreading and upscaling of innovative practices not as quantitative growth but qualitative change, which resembles the development claimed to be more desirable for SEs (Wallace 2005).

Relying on poststructuralist epistemology, the analytical focus of the research lies in relations and practices, from which identities and structures emerge (Geiselhardt et al. 2019). In a qualitative, comparative case study approach, repeating patterns in diverse contexts can be identified and those considered universal questioned (Lang 2018). Methods include focused ethnography, semi-standardised interviews

Interview partners were selected using a purposive sampling approach, with the aim to cover the most common roles of CSE collaboration based on previous literature. These include internally stable members and workers of the organisations, external partners from public, funding and civic organisations and more ad-hoc participants such as volunteers and freelance workers. The list of partners can be seen in Table and document with a snowball-method based on the first interviews with the leaders in both cases. The leaders are those addressed as leaders (‘chef’ or ‘president’) in the as1. The specific partners in each case were identified sociations, who hold a formal, central position of authority and centrally co-ordinate the daily work and/or external relations.

The focused ethnography was conducted by participating in the daily work and network events of the cases (see Table 1 for duration). It is a suitable method for a practice approach, as the researcher can accompany the unfolding of collaboration in situated and embodied interaction with practitioners and spaces. Interviews, in turn, provide a more long-term perspective, limited to individual reflection. Observations were written in field diaries and the interviews were fully transcribed. All data types were analysed jointly with applied theoretical coding principle (Flick 2006: 296–302), starting with each case individually and, finally, comparing the two. Patterns of collaboration were identified in each case according to specific, connected practices related to sustainability in specific ways.

The case enterprises have been identified based on a listing of SEs in both regions conducted by the author, as: –

representatives of typical and elementary service providers in basic and civil education sectors in their region (registered association (e.V.) in Germany and IPSS, ‘Private Institution of Social Solidarity’ in Portugal) (Henriques 2013: 186, B1I6),

Youthwork in Brandenburg is a civic education centre founded in 1992. They employ 18 people and run cultural- and political education projects for young people and adults regionally and internationally. They engage local residents with volunteering and run the only grocery store and meeting space of the village. They also host diverse organisations on their premises, including a museum and archives, and sell catering and accommodation services for external groups.

Founded in 1934 to provide daycare services in a small town, Daycare in Alentejo now employs 40 people and cares for 200 children. They have gained national recognition with their projects, such as an experimental garden and an open library. Their aim is to develop participatory education methods and increase the families’ interest in higher education and literature. Daycare also sells catering services to local public schools.

The cases are located in North-Eastern Brandenburg, Germany and South-Eastern Alentejo, Portugal, which have been chosen as border regions among the most rural in their countries (European Commission 2019a,b). The processes of involuntary degrowth are reflected in the long-term downward trends in the population, especially among young people, and the reduction of public infrastructure such as train services and public administration in both regions (Landesamt für Bauen und Verkehr 2015; Eurostat 2019; Landtag Brandenburg 2019: 82). However, North-Eastern Brandenburg is better accessible from Berlin with public transport than Alentejo from Lisbon, and the developments in the Berlin metropolitan area have turned the economic and demographic trends towards slow growth during the last few years. In Alentejo, in turn, the latest financial crisis has accelerated the declination (A1I12; Nunes Silva 2017). Germany is a federal state, where funding and governance responsibilities of educational services are divided between state and county councils. No independent county- or federal-level governance exists in Portugal, and funding for independent service providers is managed by the national ministry (European Commission 2019a,b). Furthermore, previous studies report about a relatively strong dependence on both national frameworks and informal family support among IPSSs (Campos Franco 2005). The SEs in Brandenburg, in turn, have benefitted strongly from the myriad of private foundations and increased political attention, nationally and regionally, on rural civic engagement, social innovations and return migration, resulting in targeted competitions, funding and advisory programmes (Haunstein 2019; Landtag Brandenburg 147, 208). Alentejo saw its first social innovation incubation programme backed by EU funding only in 2018.

The results are presented below in line with five collaborative patterns, which were identified during the analysis as central to the long-term sustainability of both cases. The first section discusses mainly external and multi-scalar collaboration in strategic networks with public institutions and peer organisations. It supports the CSEs with legitimacy and grant funding and helps the practitioners to spread innovative practices and challenge powerful institutions. However, two case-specific patterns of different collaborative relations in both regions were identified. The second section describes one, cross-regional pattern focused on the CSEs’ physical spaces but crossing the formal, organisational boundaries. The practices include maintaining the infrastructure and local embeddedness. The third section describes the mainly internal collaboration and co-ordination in two case-specific patterns, highlighting how different practitioners support and challenge one another and coordinate the organisation as a whole.

In this article, I identified fourfold context-specific and one cross-regional collaborative patterns, which mostly contribute to but also challenge the long-term sustainability of both CSEs. No strong duality between social and economic aims could be discovered but stability and transformation were intertwined in all relations. The way in which the practitioners succeeded in combining critical learning trajectories, provision of livelihoods and basic services convinced their partners of their work. It enabled the CSEs, especially in Brandenburg, to create long-term funding and support relations as well as a physical node of transformative public-civic learning. However, both CSEs neglected ecological sustainability to maintain their services as economically inclusive.

Both CSEs brought together participants with geographically and institutionally different trajectories. Simultaneously, transformative and stabilising internal collaboration was based foremost on respectful and frequent learning and negotiation between the practitioners. In the Portuguese case, however, the unreflected privileges and exclusive ‘predispositions’ (Roberts 2006, 626) of the practitioners towards the more unfamiliar trajectories turned the joint working into a struggle over decision-making power, risking the future of the CSE. In the German case, instead, different meanings of work were understood widely and discussed frequently with constructive critique. Diverse participants were able to reach both responsible and materially secure positions, enhancing the decentralised responsibility and commitment of the teams. Exploring such contested practises in heterogeneous teams can enhance critical understanding about rural community economies. Thus, the study provides a timely conribution to both CSE- and practise theories.

The CSEs’ long-term sustainability is, however, also related to the extent of both stability and openness for change among their institutional partners. Too reified national funding, the lack of resources and stagnation of competitive practices in the regional public sector, combined with limited access from the periphery to more dynamic partners, private funding sources and customers was a risk to the Portuguese CSE. Therefore, if service SEs are to expand the sphere of more-than-capitalist economics in such strongly degrowing conditions, there is a need to strengthen decentralised and participatory public institutions, which acknowledge the value of reciprocal, non-market collaboration and labour for basic needs (Hirvilammi, Joutsenvirta 2019). However, institutional stagnation in Portugal did provoke stronger resistance and more radical changes in public institutions than the stable, resourceful context in Germany.

Approaching the collaboration with practice perspective has enabled to observe the major relevance of collaborative relations in social entrepreneurship, thus broadening the narrow and overly positive discourse on heroic social entrepreneurs. It has highlighted the transformative potential of peer-learning in civic, urban–rural networks, where actors both challenge their authorities by strengthening grassroots lobbying and mobilisation as well as benefit from the mobility and support infrastructure that the public sector facilitates. However, the analysis reflects researchers’ interpretations about the observations and by no means the whole diversity of realities in the case organisations. Ethnographic participation assisted in grasping some crucial practices and developments, which would have remained invisible when focusing on strategic and innovative aspects only. However, the emphasis may have also been more on the internal organising than necessary, and due to the language skills, the observational data in Portugal had less depth than in Germany. This was balanced with keeping contact and rechecking interpretations with the cases after the ethnographic phase as well. A relational, participatory approach would deserve further applications to grasp the lived complexity of leadership, care and resource relations entangled in institutions, resources and spaces, which transformative rural livelihoods rely and flourish upon.