Preliminary communication
Key factors for the successful development of Australian indigenous entrepreneurship
Gabrielle Russell-Mundine
; Southern Cross University, Wentworthville, Australia
Abstract
Tourism is promoted as a pathway to economic and social development for Indigenous peoples. However, the development of successful Indigenous tourism businesses in Australia has been limited. Indigenous Australians experience barriers to enterprise development which are broad in nature and range from economic barriers (such as lack of land tenure), to resource barriers (such as lack of training, education and insufficient infrastructure). Researchers for the Harvard Project in the USA report key factors essential to successful Indigenous entrepreneurship. Three of these factors are the ability of the corporation to engage community members, the ability to secure succession, and the ability to establish proper financial and administrative systems. This paper presents results of research in Australia which supports the importance of these three factors. Using an Indigenist research paradigm, the study was conducted over three years, with the members of an Aboriginal Corporation in New South Wales (NSW). The results highlight the need to build organisational and individual capacity development before instigating enterprise development. Particularly, the results presented in this paper show that instigating appropriate forms of governance is essential to encourage participation and cooperation from community members. Secondly, results show that succession is precarious and that further research is required to establish appropriate ways to encourage and enable young people and women to take on positions of responsibility. Finally, the results support the establishment of proper systems of financial governance, not only to encourage external stakeholder confidence, but also to assist the development and empowerment of individual corporation members.
Keywords
indigenous tourism; indigenous entrepreneurship, capacity development; Australia
Hrčak ID:
24672
URI
Publication date:
22.12.2007.
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