Indigenous entrepreneurship in Aotearoa New Zealand

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.