Category — essays

This was written as a response paper for a course on social networks. We were asked to write three essays critiquing network research in our area of interest at the micro (people), meso (organization/community/infrastructure), and macro (nation scale) levels.

Generally, we chose essays that used structural network analysis themselves; in this case, I chose a paper that adopted a network (or relational) way of looking at the world, but didn’t use these formal methods. Structural network methods are a set of (mostly) quantitative approaches that (as their name implies)  describe the structure of relationships (ties) between different actors (nodes) or the position of a particular actor within this structure.

For more on network analysis, here’s a pretty good simple overview of some basic concepts.

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Unraveling Agro-food Network(s)

Drawing inspiration from Granovetter’s (1985) seminal work on embeddedness, food systems researchers in the late 1990s began to integrate economic, social, and political approaches to food systems into a network-based ontology.  Rather than look at global food systems as structurally ossified “regimes,” linear commodity chains, or markets made up of rational, disconnected actors, researchers re-imagined food systems as complex webs of actors linked by social, political, economic, and physical ties. Despite the popularity of the network metaphor, there are still few examples of researchers employing formal network methods to describe the structure of agro-food networks.

Raynolds’ (2004) is no exception. Her study of organic agro-food networks falls within a family of research that has blossomed in the last decade, which focuses on “alternative” agrifood networks (e.g. local and regional, fair trade, artisanal, etc).  She employs commodity network analysis to examine consolidation in global organic networks focusing on network governance, or the mechanisms that underlie the development of network ties. She demonstrates that certification standards play a major role in determining and maintaining an inequitable structure of relations between organic food actors in periphery and core (South-North) nations, but stops short of explicitly specifying and measuring this structure. Finally she observes that there is a “bifurcation” in organic agro-food networks between this “globalized system of formally regulated trade” and networks based in “alternative movement conventions,” and suggests that these alternative networks may offer opportunity to upend the reproduction of traditional South-North inequities, as well as inequities between large and smaller scale firms (Raynolds, 2004:725).

By design, the commodity network approach looks at multiple dimensions of global organic networks simultaneously. It describes social, political, cultural, and economic ties. Nodes aren’t limited to one type, but at times are hemispheres, at times, nations, firms, and individual consumers. The boundaries of analysis shift at times from a North-centered organic processing and distribution network to a movement network of consumers directly connected to local farmers to a global exchange between North-South nations.  What might we might learn by focusing in and using formal network methods to measure the observable interactions between a specified set of actors? In the following paragraphs, I unravel three of the many networks that Raynolds (2004) invokes, specify the nodes, ties, and boundaries, and use her analysis to make guesses at network measures like degree, density, and centrality. Then I describe how network analysis might be used specifically to add depth to Raynolds’ final conclusion about the “bifurcation” between mainstream and alternative organic agro-food networks.

The main thrust of the argument takes place at the macro-level, looking at the relationships between periphery-core nations, specifically between Southern countries (especially in Latin America) and Northern markets (especially in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan). In this network, the nodes are countries, the ties are imports and exports, and the boundaries are (mostly) limited to Latin America and the major markets described above. From this, we can infer that Northern countries will tend to have higher in-degree centrality than Southern countries (hence their “core” status).  Raynolds also describes a robust “inter-core” trade “dominated by US exports to Europe and Japan, trade between European nations, and exports from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to the top markets” (p. 725). Considering this, and that products might flow more than one step (e.g. organic tomatoes produced in Chile, processed and canned in the US, and sold in Japan; peanuts grown and shelled in Canada, included in mueslix in Germany, shipped to the UK), we might meaningfully measure betweenness and closeness centrality. This might help to identify particular Latin American countries as “bridges” that are serving as a gateway between Southern producers and Northern markets; certain Northern countries (the US, for example) with high betweenness scores might also be brokers with more power to set the global organic agenda. These measures would require data measuring the flow of some subset of organic products (all edible organic products, organic fruits and vegetables, all processed products etc.) between each country dyad. With this data, we could also compare a network of actual trade with a network of trade that we might estimate based on a gravity model based on “distance” as measured by cost of transport between countries, and “size” as measured by number of organic hectares, length of growing season, and total population. The differences between the actual and estimated networks would shed light on political, social, and cultural structures that intervene in the network. Though the data required for this analysis would not be easy to compile, it might be possible to get at by combining a variety of sources and using estimates, and the result could a more nuanced view of North-South organic agro-food trade dynamics.

Raynolds (2004) also considers a meso-level network of organic agro-food firms. In this case, the nodes are all organic firms (including farmers, aggregators, distribution companies, processors, and retailers) and the ties could be any type of business relationship (e.g. sales between firms). Raynolds describes a change from a “loosely coordinated local network of producers and consumers to a globalized system of formally regulated trade which links socially and spatially distant sites of production and consumption” (p. 725). The trend is towards greater spatial distance between nodes (which would not necessarily be captured in the network I specified above), and also towards consolidation: in network terms, a decrease in the overall size of the network and increased density. Howard (2009) documents this trend in his visualization of consolidation in the North American organic industry, but his study also does not employ formal network measures. Again, data is difficult to obtain on relationships between organic firms, especially given such a broad boundary; however, it is possible to limit the boundary to a particular commodity or limit the type of firm (e.g. only farmers and distributors) to get at a particular aspect of this broader network. This would make it possible to identify more “powerful” firms, not just in terms of endogenous characteristics like size, but also in terms of their position in the network.

Finally, operating beside the macro and meso-level networks is a micro/meso-level network of movement actors and industry groups that shape and challenge norms within the organic movement as well as certification standards. This network could be operationalized as a two-mode network of organic food movement organizations, industry groups and policy-making bodies like the USDA tied by common individuals (e.g. Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan of the USDA formerly staff at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, or former president of the Organic Farming Research Foundation currently head of an organic department at USDA); it could be a two-mode network of movement organizations tied by association with broader trade associations or participation in specific political campaigns; or it could be a network of social movement organizations tied by some other indicator of collaboration. Specifying and mapping these relationships would allow us to see more clearly which agencies, industry groups, and movement organizations occupy more influential positions in the network. If we notice particular clusters of groups, we might look to see if shared norms exist within these clusters and if they specific capacity for collective action. We might also be able to characterize more clearly the “conflict” that Raynolds (2004) describes between movement actors and industry groups in determining certification standards. If we were able to measure this over time, we might also see whether movement advocates like Fred Kirschenmann (2007), who have advocated for a more harmonious marriage between the organic industry and the organic movement into a more integrated organic community, have had any effect.

The article ends by reasserting this conflict between two parts of the organic agro-food network: the one that is governed by organic certification standards driven by commercial and industrial conventions that privilege economies of scale and efficiency, versus the one that is governed by domestic and civic conventions of trust, tradition, and overall good to society. Raynolds (2004) bases this on her observations of “alternatives” to “mainstream” organic networks that represent the “theoretically important […] contested terrain negotiated within and between commodity networks” (p. 738). This dichotomization of movement-based “alternative” networks versus “mainstream” or “industrial” networks is typical of contemporary food systems studies, yet little research has been done to examine these supposedly different networks systematically to compare their structures and ask whether they are really as “bifurcated” as theory assumes.

To systematically analyze this assumed separation, we might choose a particular organic product within a given geography that we believe has strong “mainstream” and “alternative” networks of production and consumption; say, for example, organic berries in the Pacific Northwest which might be produced by small local farms and sold at Farmers Markets and through Community Supported Agriculture schemes or produced in Latin American countries, imported, and sold at larger retailers. We could set the nodes as all firms that participate in production, aggregation, processing, and sale of the particular product, and stipulate ties as total volume of transactions between firms. The data could be collected through a mix of interviews, publicly available data, and estimates based on observations. With this data, we could do a better job answering questions like: Are “mainstream” and “alternative” networks really so bifurcated, or do firms actually overlap (we might expect, for example, some overlap in mid-sized producers who sell both at farmers markets and to larger supermarkets)? If two separate cliques of firms do emerge, are they different structurally: More or less dense? More or less centralized? Which firms have power in each clique? Are norms really different in each clique? How so?

To date, food systems researchers have not yet embraced structural network analysis despite a network-based ontology that recognizes the relational aspect of both industrial and alternative food chains. For one thing, as in the case of the above examples in the organic agro-food sector, data can be difficult to collect. In network analysis, missing data has particularly strong negative consequences on the statistical validity of the data. Even where it is possible to collect data, social network methods can seem inaccessible and overly technical. Yet these methods have the potential to bring more clarity to specific questions about how global, organizational, and individual actors connect to one another to both uphold and upend our current systems of producing, processing, distributing, selling, and consuming food.

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Works Cited

Granovetter, M. 1985. “Economic action and social structure: the problem of embeddedness.” American journal of sociology 481–510.

Howard, Philip. 2009. “Consolidation in the North American Organic Food Processing Sector, 1997 to 2007.” International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, 30.

Kirschenmann, Fred. 2007. “Guest Feature: Beyond Organic, What’s Really At Stake?”

Raynolds, Laura T. 2004. “The Globalization of Organic Agro-Food Networks.” World Development 32(5):725-743. Retrieved April 17, 2012.

A short summary that I wrote for a class on Participatory Modes of Inquiry about Action Science — one of many threads in the participatory action research (PAR) tradition. “Participation” is a tricky concept in academic realm where the “experts” who do the studying tend to exert power over “laypeople” who get studied. As I consider the academic lifestyle more seriously, I wonder in what ways my work can subvert this dominant mode of operation? Participatory research tends to take longer and hence be more expensive because it requires real relationships with people and lots of listening. On the other hand, one can argue it’s more likely to have catalytic validity especially when it comes to “wicked problems” — the kind that deal in human values and can’t be solved, but only “managed.”

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The Action Science (AS) approach to action research (AR) distinguishes itself from other forms of AR in its attempt to remarry practical action with scientific method and scientific rigor (Greenwood & Levin, 2007). The strand of research offers a direct response to the problem of “rigor versus relevance” in which norms of ‘rigorous’ positivist science such as experimentation under controlled conditions and separation between the researcher and the researched may produce results that are irrelevant or invalid for practitioners working to affect social change (Friedman, 2001, p. 160); on the other hand, more ‘relevant’ alternative action research methodologies may define validity by the positive social effect they engender and eschew rigorous empirical testing or attempts to develop falsifiable theory. AS attempts to bridge this “widening gap between social science theory/research and social science-based professional practice” (Friedman 2001, p. 159) by arguing that rigor and relevance can both be achieved by collapsing “theory building and theory testing” together into one systematic inquiry (Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 224).

Action Science embraces dual objectives of improved social practice and the development of generalizable theories of practice through intervention, in contrast to the detached observation of traditional science. Specifically, AS intervention attempts to address “intractable conflicts and difficult dilemmas faced by social practitioners” through the act of “confrontation” (Friedman, 2001, p. 160). Confrontation requires practitioners to uncover implicit theories of action (also known as “theories in use”) and reconcile them with what they say they believe (“espoused theories”):

The goal of action science inquiry is to help practitioners discover the tacit choices they have made about their perceptions of reality, about their goals and about their strategies for achieving them. The fundamental assumption of action science is that by gaining access to these choices, people can achieve greater control over their own fate. (Friedman, 2001, p. 161):

For example, in his article on the “paradox of participation” in action research, Friedman (2009) and his co-researchers engage in a meta-analysis of a “failed” project between an Israeli university and an Arab-Palestinean NGO. Through critical reflection and analysis of meeting transcripts, the researchers confront the conflict between their espoused values of equal and full participation and an implicit theory of action that required the NGO to take on a role as fully invested co-inquirer regardless of its own perspective and goals. The inquiry helped both to mend the strained relationship between the academic team and the NGO leadership and also developed “actionable knowledge” to help others build better participative relationships (Friedman, 2001, p. 1).

In line with its emphasis on developing generalizable theories of action, AS has its own well-developed set of precepts. For example, AS delineates between Model I and Model II theories of action. A Model I theory of action is characterized by defensiveness and unilateral control, whereas Model II features “minimally defensive interpersonal and group relationships, high freedom of choice, and high risk taking” (Argyris et. al., 1985, p. 102, qtd. in Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 226). AS interventions often attempt to move a group from Model I defensiveness to Model II open inquiry. Friedman’s (2001) work with the Open House organization attempted to interrupt a cycle of conflict between two subgroups in the organization by constructing a causal map of the conflict that allowed staff members to “test their own interpretations,” “see clearly their own blindness,” and eventually “redesign their theories of action” (Friedman, 2001, p. 165).

While praising AS for its attempts to address both “scientific clarity and practical utility,” Greenwood & Levin (2007) also point out the shortcomings of the approach. In particular, they note that AS assumes that individuals’ “natural” state is Model I defensiveness. This is problematic for a number of reasons. First, the narrow focus on defensiveness ignores the “richness of human motivations” beoynd defensiveness (Greenwood & Levin, 2007, p. 230). Second, the approach ignores the broader political, economic, and cultural context that may influence or determine Model I or Model II theories of action by placing the onus on individuals or organizations to create internal change. Finally, this view creates a chasm between participants (who are doomed to defensiveness) and action scientists who are presumed to have a special ability to transcend these limitations; this places the researcher in a special elite status, yet AS does not address this difference directly. Friedman’s (2009) previously referenced work on the “paradox of participation” shows that even experienced AS researchers are not immune to acting out Model I theories of action, and glossing over implicit power differentials between researchers and participants can undermine participatory relationships. Thus while AS holds significant promise as an approach to address difficult to solve and unique organizational and social problems, these criticisms point to the need for more reflective work in the vein of Friedman (2007) to develop AS theory further.

Greenwood, Davydd and Levin, Morten. 2007.  Action Science and Organizational Learning, in   Introduction to Action Research, 2^nd Edition.  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage, pp  223-235.

Friedman, Victor.  Action Science:  Creating Communities of Inquiry in Communities of Practice.  Chapter 19 in The SAGE Handbook of Action Research, 1st Edition, ed. by P. Reason and H. Bradbury. Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage, 159-170.

Friedman, Victor.  2009.  The Paradox of Participation in Action Research.  Action Research. 7(2)263-290.

I sometimes wonder whether academic writing has any purpose other than to 1) exclude and create a class of “experts” that have legitimacy and power (check out this great TED talk on when experts are warranted and when they’re dangerous) and 2) to obscure fuzzy thinking in jargon so that it can’t be exposed as such.

I’ve been reading William Zinsser’s classic On Writing Well and trying to apply it to my own writing (it’s a process…. :/)  I find that I’m sometimes able to translate ideas I come across in academia and bring them to everyday conversations, but more often than I’d like (and especially when I’m still working out an idea, or still unclear) I slip into using big words to say not much of anything.

Why do I (why do we as scholars) write the way I (we) do? How might changing the way I (we) write change the way I (we) think?

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FoodLab Detroit is a network of entrepreneurs supporting one another in developing businesses with a “triple-bottom-line” (social environmental and financial). FoodLab was founded at a small informal gathering of peers in January 2011; by August, the group had grown to nearly 30, adopted a charter, and created a steering committee. As of February 2011, we have 73 entrepreneurs on our online listserve and engage in a broadening portfolio of activities including regular meetings and networking events, business planning workshops, coordination of shared use kitchen space and other resources, and advocacy through speaking events and engagement with community partners. The organization participates in Detroit’s good food movement, a meta-movement comprised of diverse sub-movements united by the recognition that “today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ – that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind.” (Pollan, 2010). The organization is also a part of a movement to “reimagine” the city of Detroit. FoodLab members grapple with questions about GHGs and energy use, how to support local growers and connect people to their food, but also how to create more living-wage jobs, use vacant space, rebuild neighborhoods, connect an otherwise largely segregated city, and build a more participatory, responsive, and democratic community.

Our vision is to build a “network of thriving, diverse locally-owned food production, processing, and retail businesses that contribute to the well-being of our communities and are collectively committed to increasing healthy, green, fair, and accessible food options in Detroit area.” In service of this vision, we support nascent entrepreneurs in order to help them develop socially and environmentally conscious businesses that can be sustained over time. One of our primary strategies is helping to build relationships between entrepreneurs themselves and entrepreneurs and relevant external stakeholders and service providers. As FoodLab grows, how can research help us design more effective activities within this broad strategy?

This essay describes how Davidsson and Honig’s (2003) study of nascent entrepreneurs legitimizes FoodLab’s focus on relationship-building and offers suggestions on how network analysis (to which the authors allude) could provide even more nuanced and useful guidance. I begin with a summary of the authors’ findings on the effects of social capital on early-stage entrepreneurs; I go on to examine how their approach, despite its focus on the importance of relationships and its informal invocation of networks, differs from network analysis; I conclude with examples of how FoodLab could use network analysis to inform what structures of relationships are most beneficial to the development of early-stage social entrepreneurs, and how different activities might foster particular types of structure.

Social capital as a predictor of entrepreneurial “success”

How do different sorts of non-financial capital affect entrepreneurial success? Specifically, Davidsson and Honig (2003) measure the extent to which an individual’s stock of human and social capital can predict three stages in the entrepreneurial process: 1) whether or not she engages in nascent activities; 2) the frequency of her “gestation” activities (e.g. writing a business plan); and 3) first sale or profitability of the business. We will focus primarily on their findings related to social capital.

Researchers collected data from 380 nascent entrepreneurs and 608 non-entrepreneur control participants via an initial phone interview, then followed up with entrepreneur-participants after 6, 12, and 18 months to gauge the life of the venture over time. The data supported the claim that individual social capital is strongly associated with reaching all three stages in the entrepreneurial process (see Figure 1). While the authors characterized certain measures as “strong” versus “weak” ties (e.g. family bonds versus business network bridges) and acknowledged the theoretical difference between the two, data did not support claims about the effect of one type of tie versus another on the entrepreneurial process. Overall though, social capital did appear to explain a greater percentage of entrepreneurial success human capital (including formal education and attendance at business classes), especially when it came to achieving a first sale or profitability. Specifically, the authors found that

• Having parents in business, being encouraged by friends or family, or having close friends or neighbors in business increased the likelihood that someone would become a nascent entrepreneur.
• Being a member of a business network, contact with an assistance agency, being a member of a startup team, being encouraged by family or friends, having close friends or neighbors in business, and being married increased the rate at which entrepreneurs engaged in gestation activities.
• Finally, only one variable reliably predicted whether or not an entrepreneur would achieve sales or profitability within the 18-month study: whether or not the entrepreneur participated in a business network.

The authors highlight that connection with an entrepreneurial assistance agency did not necessarily correlate with whether an entrepreneur made an initial sale or achieved profitability within 18 months. Based on this, they argue,

[Social] relations are more important than maintaining contact with assistance agencies, or even in taking general business classes. […] The facilitation and support of business networks and associations may provide the most consistent and effective support for emerging businesses. […] Furthering our understanding of these specific nascent networks and learning how best to facilitate them represents an important activity for future entrepreneurship research. (P. 324-325)

As a nascent network, FoodLab implicitly recognizes the value of social capital and relationship-building. If Daviddson and Honig’s (2003) findings help to justify our existence and general approach, can they also lend more specific insight into how we should design and structure our activities?

Social capital as an generalized individual attribute versus specific relationship

While this particular study suggests that various relationships, and business networks in particular, can play an important role in entrepreneurial emergence, it does not explain the process by which these networks have an effect. The business network, and the social capital it represents, is a black box. In order to understand how a business network affects an entrepreneur (and not just that it does somehow) we would need first to understand the specific kinds of social capital or ties that are created in the context of a business network, and also to re-imagine social capital as a structure of relationships rather than an endogenous characteristic of an entrepreneur (e.g. membership versus non-membership).

Neal (forthcoming) points out that describing a network as such without engaging in network analysis tells us “very little about what networks are or how they work, frequently because they do not identify exactly who or what is connected or in what ways” (p. 5). In the case of Daviddson and Honig (2003) we see that entrepreneurs who belong to a business network are more likely to achieve a sale or profitability. The authors assume that this is because participation in a business network affords entrepreneurs with more bridging (rather than bonding) capital which Granovetter (1973) and others have suggested is important for the diffusion of new ideas and innovation. This assumption may be true, but there also may be instances in which networks (or dense clusters within networks) provide entrepreneurs with the bonding or “strong” ties that might foster exchange of resources or reinforce norms of behavior (e.g. calculated risk-taking or opportunism) that increase the likelihood of success. Rather than make a priori assumptions, we could define and measure specific ties within a network in order to understand more clearly how the nature and structure of relationships surrounding an entrepreneur contribute to success. Some specific examples of the sorts of ties that might develop within a business network include advice-giving, information or opportunity sharing, business partnership or collaboration, emotional support, inspiration, motivation, or emulation.

This approach would also shift focus from the individual to relationships as the unit of interest, and imagine social capital as a structural pattern of relationships (many or few, dense or thinly spread, reciprocal or not?) rather than an individual characteristic (does someone have it, or not?) Traditional approaches that emphasize personal attributes have a number of drawbacks. For one, they “treat each social system member as an astructural independent unit” which “assume(s) random linkages,” whereas in reality, relationships are not random (Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988, p. 31). Entrepreneurs may exhibit homophilic tendencies along characteristics like race, gender, and  age, as well as industry and level of experience. An emphasis on categorical attributes also creates false groups (for example, people who belong to a business network versus those that don’t) and ties these categories to certain outcomes.

These groupings do not get at the root of the matter. FoodLab entrepreneurs will not succeed because they belong to FoodLab, but because of the specific patterns of relationships they might build as a result of membership. The categorical approach may be expedient, but has less explanatory power and may lead to false conclusions. By actually measuring an entrepreneurial network, we can understand how certain types of social capital as evidenced in particular structures of relationship might facilitate diffusion of information versus actual adoption of new practices (Neal et al., 2011). By comparing more than one network, comparing the structure of an informal social network with an intentional business network, or comparing the effect of different activities in the same network over time, we might understand what types of programs and activities foster what type of social capital to what ends.

Future research: social capital and the individual, social capital and the group

In order to inform FoodLab’s strategic direction, we need to know more about:

1. How different network structures (aka types of social capital) lead to different outcomes. [IND VAR: network structure, DEP VAR: entrepreneurial outcomes]
2. How different activities lead to different network structures (aka types of social capital) [IND VAR: activities, DEP VAR: network structure)

In part one, we might ask questions like, do we prefer a more densely clustered or more loose network? Do reciprocal relationships matter? What effect do bridging versus bonding ties have on outcomes? In part two, we might ask things like: how does operation of a listserve versus in-person meetings affect the structure of relationships that form within FoodLab? How does intentional recruiting of diverse participants affect our network structure?

Borgatti (1998) gives some suggestions on using network measures to describe an individual’s social capital. He suggests looking at network size, density, heterogeneity, compositional quality, effective size, constraint, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector values. In this case, we would measure the ego-networks of various entrepreneurs and see how they correlate to various entrepreneurial outcomes. However, Borgatti (1998), in line with Coleman (1988) recognizes that social capital doesn’t only belong to an individual, but can be construed as a public good external to the individual and contained within the broader group.

[My thinking on the exact measures I might look at is still in the very very baby stages... as my prof Zach Neal pointed out, there's no point throwing all these measures around if they aren't getting at something we care about (in his words, they need theoretical grounding.. in my words, they need a grounding in measuring some value we care about)]

Entrepreneurism is seen as a uniquely individual pursuit. Why might we be interested in measuring the overall social capital within a group of entrepreneurs? For one, Coleman (1988) argues that even when social capital doesn’t accrue immediate or apparent benefits to the individual, it can benefit a community as a whole by increasing the stock of overall obligation, expectation, and trust, thus facilitating future interactions. Measuring the effect of relationships on an individual entrepreneur’s success would not account for this.

Also, in the case of FoodLab, we are interested not only in supporting the individual success of businesses in creating social, environmental and financial value, but also in fostering a set of shared norms (e.g. a commitment to social and environmental values). We recognize the advantage of fostering closure within the group to facilitate trust, but also in bridging between otherwise disparate clusters of entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurial allies) to encourage innovation and facilitate more effective collective action. Students of the food movement in the US have commented on this bridging capacity as one of the major strengths of the movement (Hassanein, 2003; Starr, 2010). This shift from considering individual outcomes to outcomes for communities or groups marks a significant difference between traditional entrepreneurship and social enterprise, or enterprise in the service of social change (Thekaekara & Thekaekara, 2006). Systematically measuring FoodLab’s network and linking structural methods to outcomes for individual entrepreneur and for the broader community will be useful in articulating and demonstrating our value to members and supporters, as well as in guiding the mix and design of programs and activities.

Works Cited

Borgatti, S.P., C. Jones, and M.G. Everett. 1998. “Network measures of social capital.” Connections 21(2):27–36.

Coleman, J.S. 1988. “Social capital in the creation of human capital.” American journal of sociology 95–120.

Davidsson, Per, and Benson Honig. 2003. “The role of social and human capital among nascent entrepreneurs.” Journal of Business Venturing 18(3):301-331. Retrieved February 12, 2012.

Granovetter, M.S. 1973. “The strength of weak ties.” American journal of sociology 1360–1380.

Hassanein, N. 2003. “Practicing food democracy: a pragmatic politics of transformation.” Journal of Rural Studies 19(1):77–86.

Neal, J.W., Z.P. Neal, M.S. Atkins, D.B. Henry, and S.L. Frazier. 2011. “Channels of Change: Contrasting Network Mechanisms in the Use of Interventions.” American Journal of Community Psychology 1–10.

Starr, Amory. 2010. “Local Food: A Social Movement?” Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 490.

Thekaekara, M.M., and S. Thekaekara. 2007. Social Justice and Social Entrepreneurship: Contradictory Or Complementary? Skoll Centre for Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School.

Wellman, B., and S.D. Berkowitz. 1988. Social structures: A network approach. Cambridge Univ Pr.

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[1] Including a control sample allowed researchers to test how human and social capital affected whether or not an individual engaged in entrepreneurship at all. The longitudinal design sidestepped the problem of “success bias.” Rather than only measure sustained or successful activity, the data also captured “efforts that fail or are abandoned at early stages,” and shed light on the effect of education and relationships at various stages of the start-up process (p. 311). These two features of the research design set this analysis apart from other research on the emergence of new enterprise, which generally employ cross-sectional data on early-stage businesses.

Some quick thoughts this morning when I came upon an interesting graphic on strategies for on-farm resilience from a project in the area where I used to farm. I love the idea of resilience versus growth as a measure of sustainable development AND personal development.

The Farm Resilience project describes resilience as “a community’s ability to anticipate, adapt to, and successfully overcome what usually amounts to unanticipated, harmful events. Every community faces threats. These threats may come from nature, rather the natural environment, from economic forces within the community, or from external social policies and programs. The most challenging threats are often a combination of all of these. Resilience is the ability to provide the necessary physical, social, cultural, and economic structure for members to live, work, and thrive in the face of chronic and emerging threats.”

I’ve been interested lately in the way that positive action emerges from crisis, but if we remain in a crisis frame, I think we tend to limit our realm of action to building systems capable of adapting to that particular crisis rather than considering that we might also think about this in the reverse… how can we build a system that’s better positioned to take advantage of natural energy (whether you think of low-entropy natural capital, or life-force/Qi, or some other kind of energy that I don’t yet know about).

A brief section from a long paper I wrote for a course I took in Field Research this semester in the Management and Organization department at the business school at UM. The class was wonderful, thanks to great group of classmates, and also in large part due to our really wonderful instructor Wayne Baker.

Each of us chose a field site for study and took detailed field notes over the course of the semester. Wayne read all our notes and gave us weekly feedback. It was so valuable to my development as an ethnographer to have someone else looking over my shoulder, especially someone who was completely “fresh” to my field.

I chose to focus on FoodLab Detroit (formerly the Metro Detroit Good Food Entrepreneurs) — the group of triple-bottom-line food entrepreneurs that I’ve been working with in Detroit. In a lot of ways, it become something of an auto-ethnography… so much so that I titled the second section “Origins of this Me-search Project.”

Table of contents is below for context, then just a very very short section. Interested to hear what folks think.

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The Good Food Movements: Peeking Inside the Lumpy Tent……….. 3

Origins of this “Me”-search Project……….. 5

Journey into Detroit’s Good Food Movement……….. 5

Research and Activism……….. 7

Background on FoodLab Detroit ……….. 9

History and Founding……….. 9

Network boundaries and characteristics……….. 14

FoodLab and Race……….. 15

FoodLab as a social network……….. 18

Networking a Network……….. 18

Mapping the FoodLab network……….. 20

Understanding the periphery……….. 20

Bridging two cliques……….. 22

What’s in a Tie?……….. 26

Information & Advice…………….. 26

Shared Resources…………….. 28

Emotional Support…………….. 30

Social Pressure…………….. 30

All networks not made equal……….. 31

FoodLab as a Social Movement Guild……….. 34

More than the sum of parts……….. 34

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild……….. 36

Framing within a social movement guild……….. 39

Frame disputes and network structure…………….. 41

A Dispute about Ethics…………….. 43

FoodLab as a movement broker……….. 48

From the parts, to the whole, to the whole in context……….. 48

FoodLab bridges a divided good food field……….. 49

FoodLab and Tertius Iungens…………….. 53

Further Questions……….. 55

Implications……….. 57

For FoodLab……….. 57

For entrepreneurship in Good Food Movements……….. 58

Social Movement Organization versus Social Movement Guild

FoodLab Detroit has some of the markings of an emerging social movement organization (SMO). Snow, Soule and Kriesi (2003) define a social movements as:

Collectivities acting with some degree of organization and continuity outside of institutional or organizational channels for the purpose of challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part. (P. 7)

Social movement organizations are generally conceived as formal organizations that work to implement the goals of a movement (Caniglia and Carmin 2005). Emerging social movement groups (ESMG) are SMOs who are “in the process of becoming and defining themselves. They are works in progress” (Blee and Currier 2005: 129) Yet FoodLab differs from typical conceptions of social movement organizations (even those in the process of forming) because it does not exist to implement the goals of a particular movement, but rather to propagate the use of a skill or process (good food entrepreneurship – or social entrepreneurship with some food component) in service of multiple goals defined and chosen by individual entrepreneurs. This structure seems to make sense given the fragmented landscape of movements related to good food (see Figure 8 below).

Figure 8: Social Movements Related to Good Food (in Flora 2009)

The  relationship between social movements, social entrepreneurship, and social change is contested. Mair & Marti (2006) suggest that social movement literature may be a useful lens through which to examine the process of social entrepreneurship because “both social movements and social entrepreneurship are concerned with social transformation.” Yet as Starr (2010) and others have pointed out, social entrepreneurship  and social movements are ultimately different models of social change (Martin and Osberg 2007; Thekaekara and Thekaekara 2006).

Critiques of entrepreneurial approaches to transformation within good food movements abound. Food systems academics have noted that purely market-based or entrepreneurial approaches to food systems change may fail to address or may even exacerbate issues such as food security for the most vulnerable and racial and cultural injustice (Allen et. al. 2003). Critics of entrepreneurship as a food movement strategy also suggest that a reliance on market and consumer-driven approaches to change may encourage “individualized, depoliticized behavior” at the expense of attempts at structural change (Donald 2008). Starr (2010) responds to this argument with a catalogue of the strength of the social entrepreneurship approach:

Responding to a political landscape that seems to offer only dead ends, energetic social entrepreneurs are making things happen with resolute utopianism. They are creating space, enabling new experiences, innovating, and providing meaningful jobs for other people who want to work their values. Social entrepreneurship as an approach to social change is personalistic, isolated, and unaccountable, but also experimental, decentralized, agile, and multi-issue. And entrepreneurs know that cultural relevance is necessary to their success, a lesson many social movements refuse to learn. (P. 486)

Notably, FoodLab members have described the network as a way to hold one another accountable to individual missions and shared values through public standards and audits, social pressure, and a shared value of “transparency.”

Rather than a social movement organization, FoodLab could be considered an emerging social movement guild (SMG). The term “guild” implies an association of craftsman organized around a common skill or craft. Guilds incorporate systems of apprenticeships to build skills and competence among members, they often enforce mutually agreed-upon standards of accountability, they may share resources and share a collective identity, yet guild members themselves are independent and may apply have different motivations and ways of applying their shared trade. An SMG, as opposed to a traditional guild, prepares members to use their craft in the service of social change rather than maintaining the status quo: specifically “challenging or defending extant authority, whether it is institutionally or culturally based, in the group, organization, society, culture, or world order of which they are a part” (Snow, Soule, Kriesi 2003: 7).

Some quick thoughts jotted down this afternoon

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Social movements can be difficult to observe and describe because they tend to be “fuzzy and fluid phenomena often without clear boundaries” (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Different approaches to describing social movements may focus on the way movements mobilize resources, formal social movement organizations (SMOs), the interaction of movements with external agents, or the way that movement actors construct their identities.

Regardless of the specific approach, movements can be said to be organized to some degree and can perhaps be understood best as networks or networks of networks (Diani, 2003). One of the ways of understanding these networks is through the movement’s online identity, which is becoming an increasingly important part of new social movements (Van De Donk et. al. 2004). Online identity can be understood by analyzing a variety of online media created by popular media, SMOs themselves, or individual movement actors, including websites, blog posts and articles, email archives, and online listservs.

The Good Food Movement is no exception to the slippery nature of new social movements. Despite attempts by practitioners and academics to characterize, “pin-down,” and evaluate the success of the movement with comprehensive goals and indicators (see, for example the Vivid Picture Project, Soule 2008),  the movement remains a moving target; some argue that coming to a consensus on movement goals is neither a necessary nor particularly useful exercise (Hamm 2009). As Starr (2010) writes:

Movement critics (academic and activist) tend to write like restaurant reviewers, assessing the worth of a movement’s “product” (always expected already to be running at peak performance). I have recently come to see social movements are long, stuttering conversations in which conversants do not begin with the same mother tongue but over time develop both linguistic and cultural literacy. I see social movement culture functioning as a process of recognition, query, and expansion, repetitious, slow, but growing bigger in each conversation.

Online listservs offer one glimpse into this “stuttering conversation.” Despite their obvious limitations (e.g. various “digital divides” means that low-income and rural contingents might be less represented in online conversations), listservs offer one view into the way the good food movement constructs its identity through movement “frames.”

The COMFOOD listserv was founded in 1997 by Hugh Joseph, a significant leader in the good food movement. Joseph cofounded the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC), the New England Sustainable Ag Working Group (NESAWG), Boston Food and Fitness Initiative, and the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project at Tufts. Joseph was also instrumental in starting the Community Food Projects and Farmers Market Promotion Program, two USDA grant programs.

According to Joseph, “When Comfood started in 1997, it was envisioned as a straightforward national networking vehicle on community food security topics. Now it’s become a repository for most food-related issues” (Qtd in Starkman 2008).

As of November 6, 2011, the listserv had 5333 members, which may make it the largest online network of food activists and food movement organizations. In contrast, two of the most popular movement-related listservs after COMFOOD are ASFS (created in 2001 by the Association for the Study of Food and Society) with 1829 members and SANE-T (created in 1991 as a discussion group about sustainable agriculture) with 822 members.

Generally, the list is made up of practitioners, activists, academics, students, policy-makers and other individuals. A description of the listserv on the Community Food Security Coalition website explains that “Postings by any subscriber may include, but are not limited to:

• Broad or specific discussions on the issues and strategies relating to community food security; similarly, articles of general interest;
• Requests for information, contacts, or assistance on topics related to CFS research or programs;
• Requests for information about organizations working in specific areas (for example, which groups in a region are doing entrepreneurial gardening programs);
• Requests for technical assistance or related help in designing or implementing projects;
• Descriptions of new activities your organization is initiating;
• Announcements of CFS-related activities – workshops, training sessions, conferences;
• Job notices or internship opportunities”

The listserv is open for anyone to join and to post; it is unmoderated (anyone can post to the list and posts are not screened), and governed by a peer-policing system along a set guidelines.

I was particularly interested in using COMFOOD to begin to understand the role of entrepreneurship within the movement. I’m aware that there are limitations to using the COMFOOD list as a proxy for the “good food movement” as a whole, but I see this as a place to start.

The chart below shows the number of total posts and the number of posts that include the word “entrepreneur” on the COMFOOD listserve from January 2008 to June 2011. I tabulated posts at six month intervals from the COMFOOD archives. Over this time period, there were an average of 374 posts each month and 12.5 posts (or 3.3%) of posts included the word “entrepreneurship.” Overall posting volume has increased over the 42 month period, and the use of the word “entrepreneur” has followed this general upward trend.

The next step in analysis will be to read and code instances of the use of the term “entrepreneur” and “entrepreneurship” in a randomly selected sample of 50 emails over a 12-month period from Nov 1, 2011 to Oct 31, 2011.

A draft of a paper thinking through how we might apply some of the growing body of lit on social entrepreneurship to the Good Food Movement. I wrote this back in April and my thinking’s evolved quite a bit since then. I’m not sure “social entrepreneurship” is a useful category given what I’m actually trying to get at: the role of entrepreneurship (of all types) in the good food movement (and potentially in other movements).

Rather, I’m starting to rephrase  to ask: What role does entrepreneurship (whether defined as a series of processes — e.g. innovation, a stage in business development — e.g. startup, particular characteristics, etc.) have to play in food systems change? How is it conceived in the good food movement by entrepreneurs themselves? How and when is entrepreneurship discourse invoked? What are its “real” and perceived opportunities & limitations?  What does this say about the movement itself?

Check out the MindMap for some of my questions from back in September.

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Social Entrepreneurship in the Sustainable Food Movement

“The food movement […] may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn’t just about reform — it’s about revolution.” (Walsh, 2011).

1. The Rise of Entrepreneurship as a tactic in the Sustainable Food Movement

The sustainable food movement has been characterized in the popular media as a “big, lumpy tent” that coalesces around “the recognition that today’s food and farming economy is ‘unsustainable’ – that it can’t go on in its current form much longer without courting a breakdown of some kind, whether environmental, economic, or both” (Pollan, 2010). Policies and organizations that make up the movement have increasingly promoted socially and environmentally-motivated entrepreneurship as a strategy for change.

The 2008 Farm Bill created the Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Development Center to support food enterprises that aim to increase access to healthy, affordable, locally sourced foods to underserved communities (CSREES 2009). The USDA’s Community Food Projects Program which aims to “meet the food needs of low-income individuals [and] increase the self-reliance of communities in providing for the food needs of communities,” gives preference to proposals that “support the development of entrepreneurial projects” (NIFA 2010). A study that interviewed 37 urban and rural alternative food initiatives in California found that entrepreneurial programs dominated their activities (Allen, FitzSimmons, Goodman & Warner 2003). In the past five to ten years, a growing number of consultants have emerged who specifically support sustainable food and agriculture business development[1]. At the same time, academics like Hamm and Baron (1999) have described small-scale microenterprises as “prerequisites for sustainable food systems” (p. 57). Donald & Blay-Palmer (2006) come to a similar conclusion in their analysis of a 5-year study on food enterprises in Toronto. Based on extensive content analysis and key informant interviews, they find evidence that alternative food capitalism in Toronto offers an opportunity for change towards a more “socially inclusive and sustainable urban development model” (Donald & Blay-Palmer 2006, p.1902).

Despite growing momentum on the ground, and a general golden glow around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, researchers have yet to critically examine entrepreneurship in the sustainable food systems movement. Herein lies an untapped opportunity to develop more effective theories on how and to what extent and in what forms entrepreneurship is a useful strategy to move us toward a more healthy, more sustainable food system. As Donald & Blay-Palmer point out,

The strength of the firm-centred approach is in its ability to understand better the complex multidimensional and multi-scalar interdependencies between, on the one hand, the internal innovative dynamics of firms and, on the other hand, the broader institutional – as well as social, environmental and cultural – setting within which we all operate. (Donald 2008)

Specifically, emerging theory about social entrepreneurship may provide a framework for developing useful hypotheses about the process by which individuals and organizations can produce social, environmental, cultural and economic transformation within the context of the goals of the sustainable food movement. As Peredo & McLean point out, if social entrepreneurship is a “promising instrument,” academic inquiry into its processes can produce knowledge for policy-makers and practitioners to inform effective legislative support, social policy, and best practices in development and management (2006, p. 57).

For the rest of the paper, click here to download the PDF.

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[1] Some examples of consulting firms include: http://www.cornerstone-ventures.com/, http://ediblesadvocatealliance.org, http://financeforfood.com/, http://www. karpresources.com, http://livecultureco.com/, http://www.newventadvisors.com; http://www.newseedadvisors.com/; http://nuttyfig.com/food-companies/; http://sustainablework.com/.

The essay below represents a mid-point in the evolution of my research to where it is today. When I first moved to Detroit to live and work and pursue a graduate degree, I thought I’d focus on alternative food distribution/delivery models that were getting produce and other healthy foods directly to consumers in Detroit: things like the Fresh Food Shares, Healthy Corner Store initiatives, and mobile produce trucks. Folks in town who were doing the work wanted more information on which of these models were most effective and which if any could become financially self-sustaining.

The evaluation project I was going to join never really panned out, so I continued working on my own little project related to food distribution and in the meantime, started a small project-slowly-evolving-into-an-enterprise which put me smack in the middle of a whole bunch of folks who were trying to start food businesses in Detroit. Lots of these people were not starting businesses just to create something or to make money or to have more freedom or to fill a need for some specific yummy food they couldn’t get (some primary reasons entrepreneurship lit mentions), but also because they thought of their business as a means of some kind of social change or transformation.

Soon all I could think about was how to support these businesses. I wanted to be in Detroit and I wanted to eat good gelato and bagel and pickles and I also wanted to see what other kinds of cool things these businesses could make happen. Could they really support more urban market farmers? Reinvent Jewish culture? Increase awareness about healthy eating and our bountiful SE Michigan foodshed? Could they do these things while making a profit?

I started to wonder, what resources were out there to help people like me and these others get started? Detroiters were super supportive and there were ostensibly resources in town for small businesses and entrepreneurs, but nothing seemed like a good fit. What was missing? I started looking into kitchen incubators and then began to wonder — how effective are they in actually getting businesses off the ground? Food businesses are fun and trendy, and they provide opportunity for self-employment and self-determination for folks who might not start other kinds of businesses (see, for instance, how involved immigrants are in a the retail food economy in major cities), but can spending on incubators be justified? How and when?

I still think these are interesting and important questions, but a few things happened that changed the directions of my questions. More on that to come… for now, some thoughts on incubators…

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Small business incubators have become increasingly popular economic development tools over the past 25 years. More recently, groups focused on community development and local food systems have developed kitchen-based incubators to foster food processing and specialty food entrepreneurs.  These spaces generally provide shared-use commercial kitchen facilities, marketing, operations, and technical training, and opportunities for networking and cooperation on logistical details like procurement or distribution.

While research on small business incubators is relatively robust, little formal research has been conducted to assess the economic and social impact of kitchen incubators, or to come to conclusions about factors for their success. Most of the existing literature exists in the form of case-studies, feasibility studies (e.g. Sakakeeny, 2007), technical guides (e.g. Wold & Sumner, 2002), or project reports to funders, and most of this literature tends to focus on particular kitchens within particular contexts.

This dearth of academic literature make sense for a variety of reasons: as of 2007, UK researcher Benjamin Dent (2008) identified only 57 kitchen incubators in the US. Many of these were still within the first few years of operation, and they varied in terms of location, size, services, organizational structure, and other criteria. Thus, the sample has been small and diverse, so it may not have been practical to develop generalized conclusions. Also, the impact of kitchen incubators can be difficult to measure because many espouse explicit social goals including poverty alleviation, “empowerment” or quality-of-life, in addition to economic development goals (Sakakeeny, 2007).

However, as demand for locally produced goods continues to grow (King, et. al., 2010), it appears that local communities and organizations are increasingly looking to kitchen incubators as a tool for local economic and local food systems development. As of October 2010, the University of Wisconsin Extension’s Food Business Incubator Network lists sixteen projects in Wisconsin alone. As private organizations and policy-makers consider investments in local food systems work, it will become more important to measure and describe the potential impact of kitchen incubators relative to other tools, as well as outline the internal and external factors that determine the success of a project.

There are a number of elements to this question, but one in particular stands out in current literature:  to what extent is the success of a kitchen incubator dependent on demand for local specialty products in the region and a marketing and distribution system, and to what extent can incubators take a role in helping to develop this market demand and distribution infrastructure?

An Iowa State University study of 3,500 consumers in the US showed that consumers are willing to pay a premium for place-based products regardless of origin, and that they are willing to pay even more for products from their state (DeCarlo, Frank, & Pirog, 2005). This study did not analyze the data by region, but it would not be surprising to find disparities between individual consumers’ willingness to pay. Despite national trends, research makes it clear that overall demand for local food varies both by region and by the product in question (King, et.al., 2010). Would these differences affect the success of a kitchen incubator project? In the evaluation of a pilot incubator project in New Hampshire, Sakakeeny (2007) notes that “an incubator will not succeed if the tenants do not have a product that will sell or a market to sell to” (p.46). This seems like common sense, but to what extent can an incubator overcome an ostensible “lack” of a market by making connections with local retailers and helping entrepreneurs develop their brands?

Similarly, what role does distribution infrastructure have to play in the success of kitchen incubators? According to Dent’s (2008) survey of 57 incubator managers, distribution is the most significant for micro-scale food enterprises, even before access to facilities. The Economic Research Service’s report on local food supply chains sought to understand local food supply chains in order to identify barriers to expanding markets for local foods (King, et.al., 2010). The existence of adequate distribution infrastructure and logistics may be intimately tied to the size of the market for locally produced goods, and both may play a major role in whether or not a particular kitchen incubator is successful. In order to better direct public dollars and to help guide the development of incubator kitchens, we should examine the role of market demand and distribution systems in the success of existing kitchens, and also seek to understand to what extent kitchens were able to play a role in that success by actually developing demand and/or distribution capabilities.

Works Cited

DeCarlo, T.E., Frank, V.J., & Pirog, R. (2005, October). Consumer Perceptions of place-based foods, food chain profit distribution, and family farms. (Report prepared for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture). Ames, IA: Iowa State University College of Business,.

Dent, B. (2008). The Potential for Kitchen Incubators to Assist Food Processing Enterprises. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business. 6(3). 496-511.

King, R. P., Hand, M.S., DiGiacomo, G., Clancy, K., Gomez, M.I., Hardesty, S.D., Lev, L., & McLaughlin, E.W. (2010, June). Comparing the Structure, Size, and Performance of Local and Mainstream Food Supply Chains, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

Sakakeeny, Kria (2007, April). The Common Kitchen: A Culinary Incubator. Unpublished Masters Thesis.  Manchester, NH: School of Community Economic Development, Southern New Hampshire University.

Wold, C. and Sumner, H. (Eds.). (2002). Establishing a Shared-use Commercial Kitchen, Revised 1st ed., United States: NxLevel Education Foundation.

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A (partially) annotated bibliography

Case Studies, feasibility studies, and technical reports on kitchen incubators

Buckley, J., Peterson, H. C., & Bingen, J. (2011). The Starting Block: A Case Study of an Incubator Kitchen. Michigan State University.

A case-study of the Starting Block incubator kitchen facility in Hart, Michigan, based on 15 semi-structured interviews with incubator staff, clients, and community partners. The case-study covers kitchen startup, general operations and some detail about the participating businesses.

Clark, S., Howard, H., & Rossi, V. S. V. (2009). Exploratory Study for a Kitchen Incubator in West Memphis, Arkansas. University of Arkansas: Clinton School of Public Service.

This exploratory study was conducted by a team of students from the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas in order to provide background data for a local development agency to understand the potential benefits and risks of establishing a kitchen incubator in West Memphis, AR. The report mostly draws from technical literature on establishing incubator kitchens in order to provide recommendations for further project development. The recommendations do an excellent job of drawing together best practices from multiple technical sources, many of which are provided in the appendices. Unfortunately, none of the recommendations include an academic citation, likely because little academic research has been done to demonstrate the effects of these best practices on success of a kitchen. The report does not direclty address the distinction between a rurally-based and urban-based incubator kitchen. .

Dent, B. (2008). The Potential for Kitchen Incubators to Assist Food-Processing Enterprises. International Journal of Enterpreneurship and Small Business, 6(3), 496-512.

Dent’s peer-reviewed article appears to be the only academic study in the literature which surveys a large sample of incubators in the US (57). The author uses data from the survey and financial projections of a “model incubator” to determine the financial feasibility and potential impact of a rural-based incubator in the UK. The study determines that most kitchen incubators do not break even on operating costs, do not tend to attract farmer-clients, and often attract clientele who are not interested in expanding beyond the capacity of a shared-use kitchen space. According to Dent, incubators may be more likely to achieve financial sustainability in urban areas where the concentration of entrepreneurs is greater and there is greater potential for a diverse clientele base, or if they employ alternative strategies like co-packing arrangements to increase profitability. The author concludes by noting that incubators must be seen as one part of a complex food system. They must take into account marketing and distribution challenges in addition to business planning and capital access, and economic and financial indicators may not be sufficient measures of the true impacts of an incubator.

Hall, E. (2007). Measuring the Economic Impact of the Nonprofit Small Business Incubator: A Case Study of Nuestra Culinary Ventures. Masters thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Urban Studies Program (Senior Seminar Papers).

This undergraduate senior thesis attempts to analyze the economic impact of a non-profit urban incubator kitchen in Boston, Massachusetts. The researcher began the study as an intern at the incubator, Nuestra Culinary Ventures (NCV), and developed her research questions based on her experiences there. Analysis is based on six months of financial statements and survey results from 17 current incubatees and three former program participants. The study concludes that NCV is financially “unsustainable” because it does not generate enough income to cover operating expenses and recommended that NCV either close or seriously overhaul its program structure to more effectively meet its goals of creating employment opportunities and economic benefit to local residents. It does not explicitly generalize these results to apply to other non-profit kitchen incubators, but does tend to employ strong polarizing rhetoric that implies that kitchen incubators might be poor choices as tools for economic development. While the study’s analysis seems accurate, it falls outside the scope of the paper to explore the reasons for NCV’s failure to achieve its goals. Besides a perfunctory nod to measuring the effect of the incubator on ‘”diversity,” the paper also does not go into metrics beyond a few direct economic measures: full-time-equivalent jobs created, sales, expenses versus income, and finally cost-per-job-created. The limitations of the study speak to the need for a mixed methods approach to research on kitchen incubators. The recommendations presented at the end of the study (increasing staff, diversifying the base of entrepreneurs, improving the screening process, and expanding NCV’s network) give useful clues for areas of future research.

Hollyer, J., Castro, L., Salgado, C., Cox, L., Hodgson, A., Thom, W., Yurth, C., Kam, P., & Kwok, M. (2000). Some Costs and Considerations for Establishing an Entrepreneurial Community Shared-Use Kitchen or “Test-Kitchen Incubator”. Cooperative Extension Service, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Sakakeeny, K. (2007). The Common Kitchen: A Culinary Incubator. Masters thesis, School of Community Economic Development, Southern New Hampshire University.

This report details the background, objectives, design and implementation of a pilot culinary incubator at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) and provides recommendations for the continuation of the program. The author, a Masters student in community economic development at SNHU, was not only a researcher, but also one of the three main project organizers. The study does not attempt to generalize its findings to other incubator situations, but is intended to inform local stakeholders. The most useful sections of the report are the detailed descriptions of the management challenges associated with a part-time incubator staff and the in-depth profiles on each of the incubatee firms. Different from other case studies on kitchen incubators, Sakakeeny also introduces the concepts of place-making and cultural development and cultural education as outcomes of culinary incubators beyond traditional economic metrics.

Wold, C., Sancho, M. F., Schubert, K., Wojtacha, J., & Hobbs, L. (1997). Establishing a Shared-Use Commercial Kitchen: A NxLeveL Guide.

This manual, edited by Cameron Wold is the “bible” of best practices for establishing a kitchen incubator. Wold has over 25 years of experience providing technical assistance for the establishment of shared-use commercial kitchens in a variety of settings. Cited in nearly every feasibility study and evaluation of community kitchens, this book provides a comprehensive guide to setting up a kitchen incubator from developing a local project team to writing a budget to kitchen design, all the way through to marketing specialty food products. The full second half of the manual is dedicated to appendices which include practical tools like sample tenant application forms and kitchen rules, a case study and sample feasibility study from the Denver Enterprise Center Kitchen Incubator, and a “primer” on the specialty foods market. The report does not draw from academic research, but rather from the lived experience of the six authors.

Impact Analysis, performance evaluation, and best practices for business incubators

Bearse, P. (1998). A Question of Evaluation: NBIA’s Impact Assessment of Business Incubators. Economic Development Quarterly, 12, 322-333.

Hackett, S. M. & Dilts, D. M. (2004). A Real Options-Driven Theory of Business Incubation. Journal of Technology Transfer, 29(1), 41-54.

Lyons, T. S. (1990). Birthing Economic Development: How effective are Michigan’s Business Incubators. Center for the Redevelopment of Industrialized States, Social Science Research Bureau, Michigan State University.

Markley, D. M. & McNamara, K. T. (1994). A Business Incubator: Operating Environment and Measurement of Economic and Fiscal Impacts. Purdue University: Center for Rural Development.

In this study, Markley and McNamara evaluate the impacts of a traditional business incubator in the Midwest by means of personal interviews with the incubator tenants and analysis of each firm’s financial data. The incubator studied was not a kitchen incubator, so the actual numbers were not relevant to my research; however, the authors outline a simple, useful methodology for calculating direct and indirect economic benefits and state tax revenue benefits for the incubator’s operation. The study does not attempt to compare the local economic situation with and without the incubator, but rather uses the economic impact analysis to compare the cost of creating jobs through the incubator with the “cost per job associated with the recruitment of major manufacturing plants.”

Voisey, P., Gornall, L., Jones, P., & Thomas, B. (2006). The Measurement of Success in a Business Incubation Project. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 13(3), 454-468.

The authors of this study employ a single case study methodology to evaluate a business incubator project in Wales with the explicit goal of establishing a more well-rounded set of metrics than the typical “statistical outputs” used to measure regional economic development projects. Based on a review of the existing literature on business incubators, and responses from 30 incubatees, the research concludes that “soft outcomes” such as improved business skills, increased networking, and positive PR should be taken into consideration in addition to the hard measures of profitability, enterprise growth and graduation rates. The study provides an excellent discussion of the difference between “hard output,” “soft outcome,” “hard outcome” and “distance travelled” metrics and includes an excellent graphic that lays out examples of metrics within each of these categories as they apply to business incubators.

I wrote this paper for a class on participatory action research that I took last semester — it ranks among my favorite courses. Rather than focus on practice or methods, this was a review of different strands of participatory research, action research and community-based research, with an emphasis on understanding the similarities and  differences between different approaches situating our own approaches and philosophies.

The concept of “validity” is a tricky one for action researchers and something I’ll continue to grapple with as I embark on my dissertation. I do the work that I do because I’m part of a movement that wants to change our current food system to be more diverse, locally-integrated, environmentally resilient, and equitable. I happen to think that a combination of informed action/experimentation, and rigorous documentation/analysis/evaluation is part of the way to effect that change. But what makes this “research” research? By what criteria should my “results” be judged and deemed “valid”?

Written for a “mini-paper” reading response 4/13/11:

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The concept of validity in social science research originally developed within a positivist paradigm. Since the advent of new approaches to human inquiry that challenge positivist assumptions about the nature of reality and the purpose of research (such as critical theory, constructivism, and participatory research), the concept of validity has stretched beyond its original meaning.
The positivist approach to inquiry assumes truth is observable and testable, that the purpose of research is to explain and predict, and that social science should be objective, value-free, and clearly separated from practice. Within this mode of thinking, asking about the validity of research means asking whether our tests or methods accurately measure “whatever it is that is supposed to be measured” (p. 343, Wolcott, 1990). On the other hand, “transgressive” forms of validity like the crystalline or situated validity embraced by researchers like Laurel Richardson and Patti Lather, seek instead to intentionally “problematize reliability, validity and truth” (Richardson qtd in Guba & Lincoln, 2005). In an article examining both contradictions and blurring between old and new research paradigms, Lincoln and Guba (2005) suggest that in all cases, validity seeks to address the question:

Are these findings sufficiently authentic (isomorphic to some reality, trustworthy, related to the way others construct their social worlds) that I may trust myself in action on their implications? More to the point, would I feel sufficiently secure about these findings to construct social policy of legislation based on them? (p. 205)

Lincoln and Guba (2005) separate validity into two parts: validity of method and validity of interpretation. They posit that traditional positivist definitions of validity like the kind described by Litwin (1995) in “How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity,” deal mostly in the “rigor in the application of method” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 205). While critical theorists, constructionists, and other “new-paradigm” researchers are not exempt from questions about their methods of observation, they also grapple with questions of how, what, and why we interpret observations.

Wolcott’s 1990 article, “On Seeking – and Rejecting – Validity in Qualitative Research,” is an early example of a struggle to look beyond a concept of validity tied to methodological rigor or procedure and get at valid interpretation, or rigor “in ascribing salience to one interpretation over another and for framing and bounding an interpretative study itself” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 205). Wolcott starts off describing the tactics he employs to “satisfy the implicit challenge of validity” and “not get it all wrong” (1990, p. 347). He then pushes beyond the concept of validity tied to criteria like internal consistency and the capacity to predict, and proposes instead that ethnographic research should seek to understand social structures that we humans construct. In 1990, Wolcott calls this a ‘rejection’ of validity, but fifteen years later, Lincoln and Guba describe how other new-paradigm researchers have chosen to stretch rather than reject the concept of validity and ask not only about what constitute valid methods of measurement and observation, but also what constitutes valid interpretation. “Can our cocreated constructions be trusted to provide some purchase on some important human phenomenon [what Wolcott might call understanding]?” (2005, p. 206)

The shift in focus from methodological validity to questions about interpretive validity is ultimately rooted in a shift in the ontology and epistemology of new modes of social science. In order to determine whether research findings are authentic to ‘reality’ and to know whether and how our findings engage with ‘reality,’ we must first understand how we view the nature of reality (ontology) and how we acquire knowledge about this reality (epistemology). For example, foundationalists who believe in a transcendental reality might say “real phenomena necessarily imply certain final, ultimate criteria for testing them as truthful” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 204). On the other hand, antifoundationalists who refute the idea of a truth separate from human perception might argue “agreement regarding what is valid knowledge arises from the relationship between members of some stake-holding community” (Lincoln & Guba, 2005, p. 204). In the latter case, what is valid must always be negotiated because reality only exists as it is constructed between people.

Certain definitions of what is valid go beyond questions about the nature of reality and knowledge into the purpose and ethical obligations associated with inquiry (axiology).

When social inquiry becomes the practice of a form of practical philosophy – a deep questioning about how we shall get on in the world and what we conceive to be the potentials and limits of human knowledge and functioning – then we have some preliminary understanding of what entirely different criteria might be for judging social inquiry. (Lincoln and Guba, 2005, p. 206)

Ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical validities, for example, ask about the outcome of inquiry; specifically, increased awareness or increased capacity or tendency for individual or collective action. These types of validity play a major role in participatory research and action research because these modes of inquiry tend to make social transformation or change their explicit end-goal. Here what research is ‘valid’ becomes less about what mirrors reality and more about what has the capacity to change, form or shape reality.

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Works Cited:

Guba, Egon G. and Lincoln, Yvonna S. 2005. Paradigmatic Controversies, Contradictions, and Emerging Confluences. In: Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition, edited by N. Denzin and Y Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Litwin, M.W. 1995. How to Measure Survey Reliability and Validity. In The Survey Kit, edited by Arlene Fink. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Wolcott, H. F. 1994. On Seeking – and Rejecting – Validity in Qualitative Research. Chapter 11, in: Transforming Qualitative Data: Description, Analysis, and Interpretation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

I’m trying to get in the habit of posting academic writing to the blog so I can hold myself (somewhat) accountable for not writing BS that I don’t believe in, that doesn’t really matter to me, or that I’d otherwise be embarrassed to have associated with my name.

Here’s a first go, and one that might be considered somewhat brave — this was a short final in-class essay that I wrote back in December for a required survey course in my department that I didn’t particularly enjoy. It’s not really meant as a standalone paper, but I think most of the concepts are decipherable.

Written for a one-hour, in-class final essay, December 8, 2010…

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The role of systems thinking in combating mistrust in the service of community betterment

Key Focal Area: Betterment
Problem: Mistrust
Solution: Systems thinking

In the field of community development, “betterment” must be considered a fluid concept, subject to the time, place, and situation in question, the values of the stakeholders, and the known solutions. In the beginning of the course, we discussed two scenarios: the Alaskan salmon fishery and a community on the Florida panhandle. In both cases, we discussed the multiple scenarios, including some scenarios of “improvement.” A seemingly simple task unearthed some of the complexity that exemplifies the questions we grapple with regularly in CARRS: What is “improvement” or “betterment” in an increasingly connected, increasingly diverse, and increasingly complicated world? Improvement of what type (economic, social, political, environmental)? At what level (individual, community, region, national, international?) Improvement for whom? Over what time frame?

Dr. Paul Thompson introduced us to the critical concept that a person’s values or ethical norms frame their definition and conceptualization of sustainability. Similarly, a community’s values and norms frames its concept of betterment, and even more fundamentally, its view of itself. Situating himself in his local coffee shop, Orum (2005) describes the way that people shape their ‘places’ through their actions and their values, and are in turn shaped by their ‘places’ and their physical, social, and other characteristics. Herein lies the concept of “second order cybernetics” which asks the critical question:

“Am I apart from the universe? That is, whenever I look am I looking through a peephole upon an unfolding universe. Or: Am I part of the universe? That is, whenever I act, I a changing myself and the universe as well?” (Foerster 1992, p. 15).

In this class, we have recognized how our own worldview and the worldviews of multiple stakeholders affect the way that we define and address problems. We have recognized the inherent complexity in the “wicked problem” of community betterment in a diverse society where we have “nothing like the indisputable public good” (Rittel & Webber 1973, p.155). Yet in many cases, ‘normal’ science fails to take into account the fact that traditional approaches might no longer be sufficient (Batie 2008). Similarly, many theorists portray contemporary positivist policy analysis, which also eschews discussion of values in favor of a one-size-fits-all model of ‘betterment,’ as “intellectually bankrupt” and an “impediment to democracy” (Fischer 1993, p. 165).

Mistrust by public citizens, by policy makers, and by other stakeholders may stem from this application of traditional, scientific solutions to situations for which it is not well suited. In a situation where so-called “experts” dictate the terms of betterment without considering the implications of their decision outside of their realm of expertise (including the ethical, religious, and justice-related concerns of stakeholders in addition to the oft-highlighted economic, environmental, and social concerns) it is not surprising that regular citizens can become disillusioned and mistrust the motives or abilities of the very people who they may have appointed as the authority.

The application of systems thinking may be a partial solution to this issue; however, there are two distinct types of systems thinking, both stemming from very divergent epistemologies (Ison 2008). “Hard” systems thinking still largely falls within a positivist paradigm, which assumes a common goal. “Soft” systems thinking, or “systemic thinking” assumes that the boundaries of systems are permeable and determined by those who participate in their definition, that feedback within a system may not be linear, and that systems must be examined in context. The second type of systems thinking lends itself particularly well to action research, which by its nature, includes the perspectives of the communities who have the most stake in defining and achieving “betterment” of some kind (Ison 2008). The value in this type of thinking and research is that it allows us to manage or “tame” problems that might breed mistrust if tackled with more traditional approaches.

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Works Cited

Batie, S. S. (2008). Wicked Problems and Applied Economics. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 90(5), 1176-1191.

Ison, R. L. (2008). Systems thinking and practice for action research. In: Reason, Peter W. and Bradbury, Hilary eds. The Sage Handbook of Action Research Participative Inquiry and Practice (2nd edition). London, UK: Sage Publications, pp. 139–158.

Orum, Anthony M. (2005, Summer). All the World’s a Coffee Shop: Reflections on Place, Community, and Identity. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. 5.3.

Rittel, H., and Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences. 4, 155-169.

Von Foerster,H.(1992) ‘Ethics and second-order cybernetics’,Cybernetics and Human Knowing,1:9–19.