Business Networks, Collaboration and Embeddedness in Local and Extra-local Spaces: The Case of Port Hardy, Canada

Abstract

As rural economies become more complex, locally based small-sized and medium-sized enterprises are playing a larger role in economic development. Recent studies of rural entrepreneurship have been strongly influenced by the new regionalism literature, which focuses primarily on place-based social and economic attributes (such as inter-firm networks, embeddedness, institutional thickness and untraded interdependencies). While this emphasis has been theoretically fruitful, more research is needed into how local and extra-local connections coexist and interact to generate and distribute wealth, increase business capacities and allow rural firms to participate in larger markets. This article draws on research from an in-person survey of all firms operating in the community of Port Hardy, British Columbia, Canada (N = 181) to examine the structure and content of local and extra-local business links and partnerships. Among the key findings are that locally and extra-locally oriented firms in the case-study community have different types of help networks that reflect different competitive realities in local versus extra-local economies and that the social resources that do well at one scale frequently come from the other.