Key Words: Capacity-Building, Local and Collective Ownership, Democratic Governance, Post- and Anti-Capitalist Development, Cambodia This study looks at the capacity-building of Cambodian citizens towards their local and... [ view full abstract ]
Key Words: Capacity-Building, Local and Collective Ownership, Democratic Governance, Post- and Anti-Capitalist Development, Cambodia
This study looks at the capacity-building of Cambodian citizens towards their local and collective ownership of social enterprises (SEs). The dominant image or discourse of SEs is that individual entrepreneurs or heroes lead the way to bring about social changes through business (Nicholls, 2012). Particularly in the post-conflict Cambodian context, many of the social enterprises have been created by individual expatriates and are still run by them (Tigé, 2013). However, this model can lead to the lack of accountability by such heroes, the failure to achieve more equitable and inclusive development, and the dependency on expatriate managers, especially in Cambodia’s patronage-based culture. Yet pervasive mistrust, mainly due to the Khmer Rouge’s collective labour and its intergenerational impacts, has kept people from working together, as evidenced by the dissolution of nearly half of the community finance institutions after the withdrawal of aid agencies that had supported such initiatives (Emerging Markets Consulting, 2013).
Whilst there is limited literature on the capacity-building of citizens in developing countries towards the local and collective ownership of SEs, Sutton (2013) points out that fair trade cooperative members tend not to have much voice in decision-making, due to their limited education and asymmetrical power relationships; and Dacanay (2012) similarly highlights the importance of capacity development in such contexts where capacity deprivation exists, especially in order to give meaning to the governance of SEs.
Hence, as an antithesis to the individualistic SE discourse and Cambodia’s socio-cultural context, as well as attempting to fill the aforementioned research gap, this study compares two unique cases of the capacity-building efforts for locally- and collectively-owned SEs in Cambodia. These two cases are the Soria Moria Boutique Hotel (SMBH) in Siem Reap province and Chi Phat Community-Based Ecotourism (CBET) in Koh Kong province. This research explores their forms and effects of governance; how they have been nurtured towards local and collective ownership; and the potential and limitations of such models in Cambodia.
During the five weeks of my fieldwork, I conducted participant observation and interviews with various stakeholders involved in these SEs (Dey & Steyaert, 2012). I employed a broadly inductive analytic approach so as to see the variations and patterns of the processes in question within each case as well as across the two cases.
SMBH and Chi Phat CBET show contrasting cases: the former has a local and collective management team internally trained and then appointed by the expatriate founders; the latter has a local and collective management committee elected by the community and then trained by the NGO. Because of the manageability of capacity-building attempts within the context of the small-sized hotel as well as its founders’ enabling and values-based approach, SMBH appears to have been able to equip its employees to reasonably run the business and to continue to be involved in its social mission whilst its long-term viability is yet to be known. In contrast, partly because of some uncontrollable conditions such as an elected management committee (often without appropriate skills) and dealing with diverse interests in the whole community, Chi Phat CBET has struggled, despite a remarkable increase in income over the last few years, to strike a fine balance on various fronts, such as between the market-oriented approach and capacity-building efforts and between the business necessity of making a profit and its uniquely egalitarian governance, which does not necessarily originate from democratic intentions and can be even characterised as pre-capitalist. Hence the findings also have implications for post-capitalist development (SMBH) (e.g. Community Economies Collectives & Gibson, 2009) and anti-capitalist development (Chi Phat CBET) (e.g. Dey & Steyaert, 2012)—in the context of SEs in Cambodia, as well as for the wider yet predominantly European social economy school’s debate (Social Economy Europe, 2015) on the potential and limitations of SEs with democratic governance forms (e.g. Mason et al., 2007).
