What It Takes to Lead Sustainability Transitions from the Bottom-Up: Strategic Interactions of Grassroots Ecopreneurs
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Exploring What It Takes to Bring Change about
2.2. The Knowledge Stances Perspective
- Boundary exploration. Strategies under this category refer to coping strategies linking actors to their peers or to other partners. Boundary exploration summarizes moments of ‘collaborating’, ‘joining forces’, ‘working together to achieve’ or ‘finding solutions together’.
- Practice work describes those arrays of activity enacting, making possible, sustaining in time and shaping the rationale and values of a practice field. Practice work refers to those activities describing how actors ‘go about’ creating and sustaining a practice field for a long time.
- Boundary setting describes the contexts—both actor related and normative—bounding an actor’s agency, as well as the ongoing actions of an actor towards these contexts. Boundary setting focuses on agency reacting to and coping with the given circumstances in which actors perform vis-à-vis other actors. Boundary setting can refer to boundary situations, focused on the position of an actor in relation to other actors, or can refer to boundary conditions, focused on the effects on the actor of norms, rules or regulations. Boundary conditions and situations (are set to, and) bound the extent and means to which organizations can actually interact.
- Knowledge intermediation refers to forms of knowledge work (that is, knowledge storage, manipulation, and delivery) aiming to protect a practice field. Knowledge intermediation describes here creative forms of receiving, filtering and delivering knowledge in the attempt to adequately fit boundary crossroads.
- Knowledge supply refers to knowledge delivery, nurturing or complementing other stances. Contents of knowledge supply include all kinds of knowledge, e.g., local, contextual, objectified, technical, expert and/or scientific forms of knowledge.
- Knowledge exploration is the process of knowledge unveiling and production. Knowledge exploration includes research (broadly understood), as well as facilitating access to unknown contexts and scaling out of tacit knowledge.
3. Methodology
3.1. Experimenting for Sustainability Transitions
3.2. Action Research
4. Results
4.1. Processes of Value Creation
- Value proposition. We have found that sustainability is at the heart of the value proposition of all four business models. It includes elements of community ownership and empowerment and elements of environmental protection. Each venture offers to its clients a product or service characterized by a prominent social and environmental component, as can be read below.
High-quality environmentally friendly coffee, differentiated by its organoleptic features given by the protected ecosystem where it is grown. Produced by small-holder farmers. Fair Trade certified.
- Business infrastructure. We have observed that the local community represents a key partner to all four ventures. The community is not seen as provider of either raw materials or economic resources, but as an actively engaged actor with the business. Therefore, capacity development is a key activity to all four ventures, aiming at decreasing the community vulnerability to middlemen or corrupted officials. Additionally, ecopreneurs attempt to show to the local government the benefit of their business infrastructure, so that they could become a partner, or at least not an obstacle, to the venture. Examples of this are the high-quality parchment coffee association and the solar energy community-based enterprise.
- Customer interface. In the attempt to define the customer interface, we have found that PC3 ecopreneurs challenged conventional social relations in order to become more inclusive and diminish social differentiation. For instance, the roasted coffee company changed the market segment, targeting the local market for which capacity development of local actors became an important component. These actors included bakery managers and street vendors alike. In the case of the consultancy firm, they changed the nature of the relationship with their clients, refocusing on capacity development.
- Financial model. The financial model of the vast majority of businesses in Sur de Bolivar consists of buying cheap and selling expensive. Beyond economic value for the trader, this model creates little value in other realms. Understanding the interconnections between the different components of the business model, PC3 ecopreneurs realized that there were alternative solutions to the financial model. An example of this is the rural energy community-based social enterprise. Its configuration allowed money flows between the community, the company that provides the equipment and the local government, creating an affordable and financially sustainable system of energy provision.
4.2. Experimenting with Business Models for Sustainability
‘I’m really grateful with [the PC3 participant]. His support has helped me to keep going. Thanks to the work we’ve done together this business is taking the direction I’ve always dreamed of.’(I1_051115)
I’ve worked with my teammates using the methods we’ve learned. We can better organize our ideas and bring them into practice. I’ve seen that what we’ve learned works and makes my job easier.(W1_301015)
5. Discussion
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
Code | Date | Description |
---|---|---|
Ix_(date) | (date) | Data with this code refers to interviewee’s comments made on the date specified in the code. ‘x’ refers to the initial field work (0), field work 1, field work 2 or field work 3. |
ID_(date) | (date) | Data with this code refers to internal discussions among the PC3 team at UT. |
OBS_(date) | (date) | Data with this code refers to my own observation, made on the date specified in the code. |
PP_070415 | 7 April 2015 | Participant’s profile. Refers to the form they filled in during the introductory workshop, where they wrote down their personal information and described their profile. |
REF_(date) | (date) | Data with this code refers to my own reflections, registered on the date specified in the code. |
SS_(date) | (date) | Data with this code refers to participants’ comments during the skype session that took place on the date specified in the code. |
W0_070415 | 7 April 2015 | Introductory workshop that took place in Santa Rosa del Sur. Data with this code refers to participants’ comments. |
W1_301015 | 30 October 2015 | Evaluation workshop that took place in Santa Rosa del Sur. Data with this code refers to participants’ comments. |
W2_311015 | 31 October 2015 | Workshop that took place in Santa Rosa del Sur. Data with this code refers to participants’ comments. |
W3_260416 | 26 April 2016 | Evaluation workshop that took place in Santa Rosa del Sur. Data with this code refers to participants’ comments. |
W4_191016 | 19 October 2016 | TEDx planning workshop that took place in Santa Rosa del Sur. Data with this code refers to participants’ comments. |
Appendix B
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Business Idea | Ecopreneur’s Driver |
---|---|
Solar energy equipment shop | ‘If farmers manage to have a comfortable life in rural areas, they won’t want to leave to the city’. ‘Electricity provision in rural areas is needed to increase the love to the land’. ‘If you have a fridge, you can keep more fruit and vegetables, improving your nutrition’. ‘When they brought a solar panel to the school, they bought a freezer. (…) It was the first time children saw solid water’. (SS_210715; SS_180815) |
Roasted coffee exports | ‘It’s important that young people see that businesses that do good can bring good revenue. There’s more than gold and coca in this region’. ‘This company is contributing to bringing peace to the region’. (SS_150316) |
High-quality parchment coffee | ‘Coffee farmers can take good care of Serrania de San Lucas’. ‘They deserve a fair price (…) They do many environmental conservation activities’ (W2_311015) |
Consultancy firm | ‘Community organizations need to develop their capacity to manage their own resources so that they can become more autonomous’ (SS_160216) |
Initial Idea | Final Idea |
---|---|
Solar energy equipment shop | Rural energy community-based enterprise |
Roasted coffee exports | Network of cafes, selling high-quality low-price coffee to locals |
High-quality parchment coffee | Certified coffee (own certification) |
Consultancy firm | Strategy consultancy firm focused on capacity building |
Arrays of Activities | Knowledge Stances | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boundary Exploration | Practice Work | Boundary Setting | Knowledge Intermediation | Knowledge Supply | Knowledge Exploration | |
1 | X | |||||
2 | X | |||||
3 | X | |||||
4 | X | |||||
5 | X | |||||
6 | X | |||||
7 | X | |||||
8 | X | |||||
9 | X | |||||
10 | X | |||||
11 | X |
Change Agency Strategies | Knowledge Stances | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boundary Exploration | Practice Work | Boundary Setting | Knowledge Intermediation | Knowledge Supply | Knowledge Exploration | |
Perform innerwise | 9 | 2 | 11 | |||
Extend a field | 1, 7, 8 | 3, 9 | 5 | |||
Bypass and re-scale | 6, 10 | |||||
Broker a knowledge cycle | 2 | 4 | 11 | |||
Take part in building the public sphere | 5 |
Strategic Niche Management | Strategic Interaction |
---|---|
Shielding |
|
Nurturing
|
|
Empowering |
|
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Ramos-Mejía, M.; Balanzo, A. What It Takes to Lead Sustainability Transitions from the Bottom-Up: Strategic Interactions of Grassroots Ecopreneurs. Sustainability 2018, 10, 2294. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072294
Ramos-Mejía M, Balanzo A. What It Takes to Lead Sustainability Transitions from the Bottom-Up: Strategic Interactions of Grassroots Ecopreneurs. Sustainability. 2018; 10(7):2294. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072294
Chicago/Turabian StyleRamos-Mejía, Mónica, and Alejandro Balanzo. 2018. "What It Takes to Lead Sustainability Transitions from the Bottom-Up: Strategic Interactions of Grassroots Ecopreneurs" Sustainability 10, no. 7: 2294. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072294