Characterising rural businesses – Tales from the paperman

Journal of Rural Studies 28 (2012) 499e506

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Characterising rural businesses e Tales from the papermanq Gary Bosworth* University of Lincoln, Lincoln Business School, Brayford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS, UK

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Rural business Rural economy Self-employment Rural society

A case study of a self-termed ‘rural business’ is used to deconstruct the concept of a rural business and shed light on specific features of ‘operating in a rural area’ and ‘serving a rural population’. Alongside ‘selling a rural product’, the paper claims that these make up three parameters for categorising rural businesses. Highlighting these unique or niche features of a rural business makes is possible to recognise values that extend beyond financial measures. As such, this research provides a mechanism to support rural policy aimed at delivering both economic and community development objectives. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction It has been much debated in rural sociology and enterprise research, but a meaningful definition of a rural business remains somewhat elusive. In the UK we might think of a farm, a farm shop, a village pub, a recreation activity, a tourism business; or maybe the milkman or the post office, a vet, a land agent, an organised hunt or shoot, a rural estate, a garden centre.I could go on. In other countries and in different contexts you will formulate your own conceptions but what is it that categorises these businesses as being different from an advertising or IT consultant working out of a converted barn at the end of his or her back garden? In this paper it is suggested that there are certain intangible qualities of rurality that supersede fundamental spatial delimitation. To illustrate these intangible qualities, I use the case study of a family newsagents business. The owners are in fact my parents and they started the business in 1980, the same year as I was born. I must therefore admit to being a part of the “researched” but I suggest that I can present this case study from a “complete participant” perspective (Robson, 2002, p316), with the caveat that my personal views and understandings of reality have been shaped by this experience. Indeed, “being local”, according to Heley (2011, p231), “has the potential to benefit wider research into cultures of rurality” and the conventional ethnographic strategy of putting a distance between the researcher and the researched is beginning to be viewed less rigidly (Crang and Cook, 2007). When I was growing up, it often seemed a slightly unusual way of life for Mum and Dad. They wake before the crack of dawn,

q An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 9th Rural Entrepreneurship Conference, Nottingham Trent University, June 2011. * Tel.: þ44 (0) 1522 835576. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0743-0167/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2012.07.002

except in the height of summer, take no holidays and use their kitchen as a newspaper and magazine sorting station each morning. As I grew older, it was clear from other children that this was more than slightly unusual but they seldom complained and it was the only way of life I knew. I can therefore recount the story from an “internally normalised perspective” before unpacking some of the sociological issues around the “rural” nature of the business. In writing this paper, I take a somewhat arbitrary preconception of the word “rural” to mean any settlement smaller than a town. Given that the paper is not seeking to employ statistical measures or other spatial data, the reader will adopt his or her own perceptions of what this rural space looks like and will draw their own conclusions as to the precise nature of the businesses that they see operating within this space. The aim here is to address the components of rurality that apply to businesses which have a connection with the landscape and natural resources, which operate in areas that are sparsely populated in relation to their wider region, or which serve populations that live predominantly in these relatively sparse areas. 2. Literature review Cabus and Vanheverbeke claim that “there is no such thing as simply an urban economy, just as there is also no rural economy” (2003, p14). This is supported by increased understanding of the interrelatedness of spatial scales in the face of globalising forces (Hudson, 2011) and by evidence of the growing similarities in the composition of urban and rural economies (CRC, 2008b). However, such views also risk overlooking the unique, defining features of rural businesses that create different types of values, both to local economies and to local communities. Between 2005 and 2010 in England and Wales the greatest proportional increases in business

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numbers occurred among businesses employing fewer than ten people and located in areas classified as villages or hamlets and isolated dwellings based on the Defra (2005) classifications (Spedding, 2010). To overlook these categories of businesses or to amalgamate them into larger spatial scales does not address the major issues of the contemporary rural economy. The purpose of this paper is therefore twofold. The first aim is to provide an alternative perspective for defining a rural business and the second is to highlight certain issues that create, or are perceived to add value in rural communities. This second aim seeks to encourage a more nuanced approach from policy-makers to address criticisms of policy that fails to treat individual new, small, or entrepreneurial firms equally. In recognising that some are favoured while others are disfavoured, Dennis noted that “those who encounter barriers are not necessarily those who receive the compensating subsidies and vice-versa” (2011, p151). Moreover, if policy can deliver outcomes that address both community needs and business support needs simultaneously, the over-riding desire to maintain rural areas as sustainable places to live and work is crystallised. Researchers in this field have recognised that informal networks have traditionally been stronger and more important in rural than urban areas (Reimer, 1997; Atterton and Bosworth, 2012) with the overlap or embeddedness of professional and personal or social ties being highly complex (Monsted, 1995). This means that in understanding the behaviour and ambitions of rural business owners, we cannot separate out the economic and social factors (Granovetter, 1985). Furthermore, in an era of increasingly endogenous approaches to rural development (Woods, 2005), the opportunity to build development potential alongside the existing mosaic of small enterprises can ensure not only that the existing businesses remain viable but also that new activity is connected to the existing local identity, resources and capabilities. Such an understanding of the interrelatedness of rural businesses and their communities can begin to highlight the critical moments, barriers and challenges that might cause an otherwise viable business to decline or cease trading. The trend of declining rural services has been well documented (Commission for Rural Communities, 2010) and the importance of continuity in relation to customer service makes it very difficult for privately run businesses to overcome a significant break in trading or for a new business owner to overcome significant start-up costs. Once a commercial property in a village has residential planning permission, we only have to refer to an estate agent’s window to realise that market forces will dictate that the community facility will never return. Growth in community-run enterprises (Plunkett Foundation, 2011) may help to offset some of this decline, especially following the introduction of new powers to local communities set out in the Localism Bill (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2011), but one is left questioning the extent to which such enterprises can support employment and provide a long-term substitute for privately owned businesses. The question of succession can also be a challenging one for the individual running a small rural business. For many, sons and daughters are leaving rural areas due to the location of higher education provision, in search of higher paid jobs and as an expression of social choices and ambitions (Stockdale, 2003, 2004). This creates uncertainty for the future of the wider rural economy and destabilises the demographic composition of rural areas. For those enterprises without an obvious successor, impending retirement can lead to down-sizing, a factor especially recognised in the tourism sector where a rural business is often seen as a bridge to retirement (Morrison et al., 2008). These businesses lose momentum and value, creating further challenges for any future purchaser. Where succession does occur, succession-planning

influences the long term business model where one of the central aims is to pass on a sound and often improved business to the next generation (Lobley, 2010), with implications for the degree of risk that might be taken. From the context that more rural locations provide not just spatial challenges for business activity but also distinctive social environments, the need to explore the interface between business and community is apparent. As North and Smallbone (2000) have noted, this does not mean that rural firms are necessarily less innovative but innovation is more influenced by geographical factors. Geography also impacts upon the relationship between skills and productivity with the relationship being stronger in rural areas where labour market opportunities are more restricted (Webber et al., 2007). On a more positive note, small rural firms in the UK have demonstrated strong resilience in the face of the recent recession due to their greater flexibility (Anderson et al., 2010). Through the detailed case study that follows, examination of the interface between business and community is extended to consider interactions with ‘rurality’ more broadly in an attempt to develop a means of categorising rural businesses in a way that accounts for these less measurable but culturally recognisable characteristics. 3. Case study: R and G Bosworth newsagents The business began as a 6-day a week commitment, delivering newspapers and magazines to the four villages of Warmington, Elton, Woodnewton and Apethorpe in North East Northamptonshire, shown in Fig. 1. At the time, newspapers arrived from London via rail and then delivery van to our home, where they were sorted, loaded into Dad’s Ford Fiesta van and then delivered through the customers’ letterboxes, or in some instances into conveniently situated wooden crates, plastic boxes, bread bins, greenhouses or sheds. In some villages, he was assisted by paperboys and girls (including a retired newsagent who carried on until his early 90s) earning pocket money by delivering bags of newspapers but for the most, it was Dad running up and down garden paths or winding down his window to reach out to the occasional roadside letterbox. The profit margins on newspapers are not huge but with a delivery charge on top of the face value of the paper, a fair living could be made. Within a year, the business was a seven days a week enterprise, growing to serve the area indicated on the map. It was clearly a gamble to leave a secure full-time job in the public sector but it was one that allowed both my parents to be at home while I grew up, something which seemed quite normal but looking back was actually quite a privilege. Without wanting to sound autobiographical, this is an important point e rural businesses are often driven by non-business motivations centring on family life (Thompson and Atterton, 2010; Anthopolou, 2010). The family was also heavily involved in supporting the business and I recall my grandmother kneeling in the back of Dad’s van on a Saturday morning and running around the villages with Dad every third week so that he could be home in time for his turn on the school run. More recently, aunts and uncles have helped with driving and I too took a week off work to help when Dad dislocated a shoulder tripping over tree roots on a customer’s driveway. Rural businesses rely on this support and families can grow closer by working together in this way, adding to household well-being (Oughton et al., 2003). As the business grew, the start time became earlier to ensure that delivery reached customers before they left for work, and Dad could get home in time for the school run. A newspaper round may not be a strategically complex business model but customer service is essential, and as Dad said many times, “the customer expects their paper before they leave for work, otherwise why pay

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Fig. 1. The trading area (Source: googlemaps UK).

a delivery charge?” Customer service is critical for so many rural businesses, because they are serving a finite customer base. In this case, that service extends to the personal interaction of taking time out for friendly conversations with elderly residents and even helping them by posting their mail. In a wider community sense, this altruistic attitude extends to delivering advertisements and offering sponsorship for local community events. These actions are seldom taken with a clear purpose of selling more newspapers but they become an ingrained component of supporting the community. One example of this is provided by the decision to continue paying for advertising space in the parish magazine when in almost twenty years “it probably never led to a new customer.” In adding, “it’s much more about word of mouth”, however, Dad recognises that supporting community ventures is a part of the responsibility of a rural business. While the business is deeply embedded within the local community, much of the activity of the business has more interaction with the non-human world. Rising before most other people and watching the world wake up each day provides a strong affinity to nature, engaging sensuously with the material world (Carolan, 2008). As well as learning about when the chiff-chaff, the swallow and the cuckoo arrive in England from an early age, my experiences of doing the round with Dad in the school holidays help me to appreciate the changing seasons, the changing daylight, temperatures and weather conditions. The more extreme conditions of heavy snow, floods or hurricane winds also provide their own challenges. In most cases bad weather just adds time and sometimes diversions to avoid flooded roads or fallen trees but in the worse cases, villages have been snowbound, delivery lorries have overturned on icy motorways and flooding has been so high that only farmers’ vehicles could get through. This is where businesses pull together and farmers have helped towing Dad’s van out of hedgerows and even delivering the papers through high floods. These examples of cooperation are invaluable to rural businesses, maintaining the reputation of overcoming all adversity and strengthening social bonds with customers through this community interaction. Most customers say that they would not have minded if

the papers hadn’t got through on some of the worst days but the extra effort strengthens customer loyalty and the reputation of the business. The nature of a rural business means that there are many other exogenous challenges adding to their vulnerability. The first of these came in 1986 with the printers’ strikes and along with increasing rail disruption throughout the decade, the vulnerability of this small business to wider economic issues became increasingly apparent. More recently, the petrol blockades in 2000 could have proved highly disruptive but as a regular customer of a small garage in a neighbouring village, Dad was one of “a few regulars who were well looked after” to use his words. Another example of rural businesses sticking together e not formal cooperation, just a mutual understanding of the difficulties faced. In a later conversation, the garage owner explained that there is no profit in selling petrol as an independent rural garage e apparently his wife could buy it for the same price at the supermarket as he could wholesale e so customer satisfaction was essential to support the profitable repair and servicing side of the business. For Dad, retirement is on the agenda. As the Internet and TV deliver more news directly into our homes, supermarkets have been allowed to sell newspapers and commuting continues to increase, so newspaper delivery has declined. He said that in the later years, “only about three-quarters of lost customers were being replaced”. For a new business, this would have been a big concern and might have led to a new direction or innovations but, recognising that the business was earning enough to maintain a way of life and to support a pension, there was no motivation to take risks and invest energy in an uncertain break from the norm. For Mum and Dad, this is not a major concern but replicate this across rural businesses, and we see a more worrying picture. If someone buys the business outright, they will have to invest a lot of time and effort in pushing it forward to a position where it can continue to support a family income so the future is uncertain.1

1 The business was sold late in 2011, to a newsagent in the nearby town who was keen to expand.

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Perhaps this is one of the biggest emotional conceptualisations of rural businesses e they evoke a sense of permanency. The village shop and pub are a link to the old village, an embodiment of the rural idyll for which so many of us yearn. The milkman, the paperman, the postmaster or postmistress, they are figures from childhood memories (Horton, 2008) so their passing is lamented. Perhaps the same will be true when Dad is no longer running up and down people’s garden paths. 4. Analysis The case study is an unapologetically personal account resulting in the key features attached to “rurality” being presented from a strongly personalised viewpoint. In the remainder of this paper, each of these key features that have been aligned with “rural” are considered from theoretical perspectives that enable us to determine whether they are significant and, if so, whether they should be more clearly defined and more strongly supported. 4.1. Location Geographical location is clearly an important factor, although of course there are many definitions and typologies categorising which places are in fact rural. This is not the place for a detailed reinterpretation of scales of rurality in a spatial sense but suffice to say that a village location within a rural administrative district qualifies as a rural space. Based on the Defra definitions, the study location is in the district of East Northamptonshire which is “Rural50” and the specific area in question characterised at the ward level as principally “less sparse; village and dispersed” (Defra, 2005). Not only is the business address in a rural location but in serving 11 other villages it is part of the wider rural economy of that local area. The economics of operating a business that serves relatively sparsely populated villages provide certain challenges and in this case study, the question of distance is particularly critical when the strategic goal is to complete all deliveries within a specific window of time. This could be presented as a case for support for rural businesses, but instead perhaps it should be seen as providing motivation to increase efficiencies through combining services or introducing other innovations that could progress the business. For rural business owners, location provides a set of challenges that are apparent from the outset and can therefore be incorporated within a business plan. The fact that businesses can operate successfully within these parameters is a positive indication of the tenacity of many rural business owners. Indeed, the location characteristics can be hugely advantageous in certain business sectors so while they are undoubtedly an important feature of rurality, we should avoid assuming that “rural” is only a spatial term. As a “home-based business” with no aspirations to relocate, one might assume that this is a lifestyle business with minimal growth potential. As we have seen, however, especially in the early years, the business did grow without being constrained by premises. The major constraint was the cost of labour, which restricted the business to the number of villages that could be delivered by one person and a handful of paperboys. This fits with other research into homebased businesses which found that while owners tend to have a better quality of life, they are not making financial trade-offs and the location choice is more influenced by business factors than lifestyle ones (Mason et al., 2011). 4.2. Interaction with nature Landscape and nature, in their broadest sense, are often cited as reasons that people both live and work in rural areas. The lifestyle choices of business owners are often influential in their subsequent

motivations given that maintaining that way of life often takes precedence over pure profitability (Ateljevic and Doorne, 2000) leading to greater risk-aversion (Getz and Petersen, 2005). The individual constructs of “lifestyle choice” are the negotiated outcomes of personal, social and environmental desires suggesting that these forms of businesses are more sustainable and more attuned to their local setting. As such, these forms of rural businesses deliver certain contributions to policy objectives, but because they are not “high growth” or “knowledge-driven” but are regarded as “lifestyle” businesses, these contributions are less recognised by policy-makers. For many rural businesses, nature is at the heart of their activity. Whether maintaining natural habitats or landscapes, farming the land or being exposed to changing weather conditions, many rural businesses have a closer relationship with nature in its broadest sense. This mirrors a wider sense of rural life being more closely attuned to the seasons (Halfacree, 2009). In terms of perpetuating our attachments with rural places, this interaction with nature and the linkages with past generations are evident from many cultural representations of village life. Indeed, those who seek to preserve rural businesses as “village institutions” are perhaps aligning the institution as part of their perception of the “natural” rural community simply because the post office, village hall and church evoke a sense of place just a strongly as the landscape and wildlife surrounding them. Even in my family’s business, although nature did nothing more than provide the setting for activity, the interactions and experiences of the natural world have had a telling impact. In one sense it generates respect for wildlife, landscape and climate. In part this is a human emotion spurred by the life choices of the business owner but in many cases the need to work with nature leads to a different approach to work. We cannot cast blame when nature creates challenges and that instils a sense of determination e it also provides a link with the past and with the non-human world since these humanenature interactions have existed since the first caveman hunted for food. In another sense interactions with nature encourage learning through the conversations that are stimulated by different sights and experiences. In this respect, a range of rural businesses are contributing to the knowledge of participants and their acquaintances, maintaining and strengthening both human and non-human connections. 4.3. Community The sense of serving the community is integral to the perception of many rural businesses (Bosworth, 2009; Smith, 2008). Interviews with rural shopkeepers demonstrated that it is not value or choice that matters but a combination of convenience and loyalty to the community. In turn, the shopkeepers recognised that they had to be seen to be involved in the community, whether selling raffle tickets, advertising local events or stocking local products (Bosworth, 2009). Without this ubiquitous community service, over and above individual “customer service”, why should the community continue to support the business? For businesses serving non-local customers, there is still a sense that customer service extends beyond their own customers. In a sparse location, tourism businesses also recognise the need to maximise customer loyalty and share word of mouth marketing to extend the visitor attraction to something more than the businessecustomer relationship (Bosworth and Farrell, 2011). This customer satisfaction builds a reputation that instils reciprocal loyalty either towards the business-person or in the case of tourism, the tourist area in question. As well as serving the community, rural businesses and entrepreneurs are often associated with creating or defining aspects of

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the community (Sommerville, 2011). In the opening paragraph I initially wrote “categorises these people as being different” before amending it to use the word businesses. This is another personal perception that requires further qualitative research across a more representative sample but it demonstrates that in many rural businesses there is an identifiable person, something that perhaps harks back to a village scene where each shopkeeper or tradesman was known by name. In this sense, the people and the businesses are inseparable; they are truly embedded in a Granovetterian sense (Granovetter, 1985) as well as being strongly tied into local social networks. Many authors have written about the embeddedness of rural businesses, but they generally refer to “local embeddedness” (Amin and Thrift, 1994), the connections to the locality and relationships within local networks. The local embeddedness derived from local trade networks and knowledge exchange within rural economies (Kalantaridis and Bika, 2006) is quite different to the Granovetterian interpretation of embeddedness since this can strengthen or decay over time and must be sustained through local engagement (Atterton and Bosworth, 2009). For Granovetter, embeddedness is a fixed state of being whereby economic and social factors are so inexorably entwined that they cannot be considered in isolation (Granovetter, 1985). While embeddedness is proclaimed as a strength for rural economies (Jack and Anderson, 2002; Kalantaridis and Bika, 2006; Atterton, 2007), farming by contrast has become a lonely, increasingly mechanised process and the loss of a sense of community in many rural areas (Bell, 1994) is perhaps more related to the loss of traditional farm activities than to the rise of counterurbanisation. Of course, the two processes are related but as fewer village-based interactions are occurring and the number of village-based jobs in traditional rural occupations has declined, so the space is created for incomers to express their preferences for rural lifestyles. These transitions in rural society have led academics to discuss the value of “embeddedness”, “networks” and “social capital” in rural areas e something that would have been taken for granted by previous generations. With farming not creating the visible social networks in contemporary, post-productivist rural communities, filling that void becomes the responsibility of other service-based businesses e hence we see the passionate campaigns to save village post offices, pubs and shops. 5. Discussion In terms of defining rural businesses, the importance of “service” to maintaining a loyal rural customer base can be taken as one parameter for categorisation. Along with being “located in a rural area” and “serving a rural customer base”, a third parameter is “selling a rural product”, whether food or other nature products, traditional crafts, recreation activities or environmental goods. There is not the space to explore the question of defining a rural product in this paper, but suffice to say rural resources, whether skill-based, land-based or environmental, are required to make the final product with minimal processing or value adding activity occurring outside of the local rural area. These three parameters that define rural businesses are shown in Fig. 2. The case study presented fits into the segment marked ‘A’ in Fig. 2. I think we would agree that it is a rural business so this proves that a rural business need not meet all three criteria and be in segment D, which would in fact be a very small group of businesses. We can think of other businesses that might populate each of the other segments in the diagram and have extensive arguments about which are rural and which are not, based on a range of characteristics that we assign different levels of importance. Based on the criteria set out above, Table 1 lists a selection of businesses

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Serve rural population

Sell a “rural” product

B D

A

C

Located in a rural area Fig. 2. Categorising rural businesses.

that might fit into each category. As the reader, I welcome you to challenge some of these categorisations or add some of your own examples e these are included purely as indications of my thoughts. A growing number of tourism and recreation activities in column C highlight the increasing propensity for business to commodify the countryside (Perkins, 2006) and focus on external markets. By contrast, those businesses that are in decline dominate column A, highlighting the fact that it is changing preferences among consumers within the “rural market” that are at the heart of this decline. I find myself leaving out many of the new businesses that are setting up in rural areas because they only satisfy the “location” criterion. One of the largest growth areas, the knowledge-based service sector, has neither a rural product nor a predominantly rural customer base. This does not mean that they are not important drivers of change in the contemporary countryside but in understanding their role in the social and economic sustainability of rural areas, this typology indicates that they sit on the periphery, in the outer circle labelled “rural location”. It is therefore the interactions between these businesses and others that sit closer to the centre of the Venn-diagram that will determine the extent to which they truly become a part of the rural economy, beyond statistical delineation. The typology demonstrates how we can start to crystallise some of our perceptions about what constitutes a rural business into a useable framework. Effectively, I am arguing that if a business sits in any of the overlapping segments of the diagram, it is a rural business. In other words, the business makes contributions to rural society that go beyond its economic contribution, it plays a role in environmental management or protection, it provides access to the countryside or it safeguards particular rural skills. Put simply, there is a value to the business that is not fully rewarded by the open market and this provides a case for greater policy support.

Table 1 Categorising rural businesses. Type A

Type B

Type C

Type D

Rural market, rural location

Rural market, rural product

Rural product, rural location

Rural product, rural location, rural market

Post office Village shops Village pub Newspaper delivery

Farm suppliers Farm consultants Vet Milkman

Farm shop Thatchers Fence-making Gamekeeper

Village garage Village school

Land agents

Farms Food processing B&B/hotels Nature reserves, visitor centres Hiking supplies Livery stables Foresters

Shearers Drystone-wallers

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This does not advocate generic support for all businesses in these categories, rather we can identify some of the particular threats faced by rural businesses, and provide a greater understanding of the causes, potential solutions and the potential value that would be lost if the business failed. One example is business succession, highly relevant to the earlier case study. At these critical moments in the evolution of a rural business, there is the potential for a wealth of good-will and tacit knowledge to be lost. The customer loyalty built up over many years must be rekindled, the scope for growth maybe less apparent compared to businesses in more densely populated locations and the increased costs of communications all create challenges. For the iconic businesses in rural areas, notably the pub or village shop, the cost of purchasing the premises is an added barrier. Rural housing prices inflate the cost of properties that have the potential to be granted planning permission for a change of use and with family enterprises often owning clear freeholds on their property, the new purchaser also faces rental or mortgage costs that the previous owners had long since paid off. Many rural businesses are vulnerable to exogenous shocks. The Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in 2001 demonstrated this with one in six affected firms reducing employment, not just in agriculture (Bennett et al., 2001). For Dad’s newsagent, it just meant driving through a few anti-viral dips when delivering to farms but for many businesses, especially in Northern England, the consequences were much more damaging. Successful businesses saw a rapid drop in visitors as tourists were put off by news images of burning pyres, access routes were closed and bio-security measures restricted trade (Phillipson et al., 2002). Compensation after the event enabled some businesses to diversify and move forward but for those unable to manage the initial ten months of turmoil, the opportunity for re-building the business may have been lost forever. The New Labour government introduced “rural proofing” in 2000 (DETR/MAFF, 2000) for all policy implementation but perhaps this approach was too broad. Indeed, Atterton (2008) also criticises this approach for overlooking the positive contribution that rural areas can make to regional economies. Instead, if specific areas of disadvantage can be identified, a more targeted set of interventions might support the rural business community and, in turn, the wider rural society. Currently, there are discussions about fuel price reductions for rural communities, recognising the unique case where public transport alternatives are seldom available or viable. If the policy is implemented to support all businesses in a rural area, the outcome might be that heavy fuel-users relocate but if the policy could be targeted at just “rural businesses” the intended impact of safeguarding those providing a valued contribution to rural areas could be more effectively achieved. Clearly, there are difficulties in employing such a subjective typology within a policy framework but one option is to consider a form of intervention that recognises the non-market contribution of rural businesses. Farmers are paid for environmental stewardship but rural publicans and shopkeepers receive no payments for their contribution to the built environment or for the social value they provide. Politically, this could be difficult to instigate, not least with EU competition legislation, but if local service provision reduces the need for certain state-funded care services or rural businesses incur costs for maintaining an attractive local environment, these additional contributions to societal well-being could be recognised. More widely, if businesses are providing local employment, training or business support services it could be possible to reward these market externalities too. Rather than “rural proofing” policy to make sure rural areas are not disadvantaged, a more localised approach could see new rural initiatives

being the vanguard for a new way of re-connecting all kinds of businesses with their local communities. Potentially, such an approach could eventually see the full range of economic and community development policies becoming more joined-up at lower levels of geography too. 6. Conclusions This paper has highlighted a range of characteristics that can be associated with rural businesses, in a British context. In the case study presented, these range from spatial economic issues such as the nature of the customer base and the business location to social and emotional perceptions of the role of the rural business owner and their timeless entwinement with the fabric of rural life. As such, the findings strengthen the view that embeddedness is both a permanent feature in rural life based on Granovetter’s interpretation, as well as a spatially determined state of association or belonging in a particular rural community. The auto-ethnographic approach provides a level of detail unobtainable through more conventional research techniques, in particular appreciating the extent to which the business defines a business-owner’s identity and determines day-to-day routines. Rural businesses tend to be researched either from an economic perspective, where peripherality and disadvantage is the focus of attention (e.g. Atherton and Hannon, 2006; Webber et al., 2007; Fuduric, 2012) or from an entrepreneurial skills perspective where personal traits and competences are the focus of attention (e.g. McElwee, 2006; Alsos et al., 2011). The rural economy is made up of a diverse range of businesses whose owners and employees are subjected to many influences, both social and economic, something that is hopefully emphasised through the style in which this case study is presented. Efficiency arguments might question the rationale of supporting small-scale businesses, especially those appearing to reflect a lifestyle choice, but if rural areas are to continue to function as economically and socially sustainable places for a range of people to live, these businesses can play key roles that supersede financial measures. The categorisation process helps to identify the key attributes of certain rural businesses and align them with certain benefits. This can help policy to support the attributes associated with the positive externalities to maximise social welfare and can help society to recognise the value of these businesses and potentially encourage their growth. The business owners themselves might also begin to recognise that their innate behaviour can be used to benefit the business in other ways. The case study also shows the extent to which other people, especially family members, are integral to the success of many rural businesses and the criticality of these support networks must not be underestimated or taken for granted. By contrast, the exposure to business, the development of bonding social capital in a business context and the potential to strengthen family relations through rural businesses represent valuable sideeffects. Beyond this, those rural businesses that are to some extent reliant on local rural markets assume additional responsibilities. As such, profit is not the sole aim. For small businesses, survival is often the biggest aim and where survival goals outweigh profit goals, this reduces risk-taking. Survival might relate to supporting a family and maintaining a home, a social pressure not to “fail” or a social desire to continue providing a valued service. These pressures are perhaps stronger than those faced in non-rural businesses where churn tends to be higher and people move more readily between jobs. The downside is that low risk-taking and low rates of churn are associated with lower rates of innovation and growth, resulting in concerns for the future of certain categories of rural businesses.

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If the rural economy is to realise the untapped potential, valued between £236e347 billion by the Rural Advocate in 2008 (Commission for Rural Communities, 2008a), policy should shift towards an approach of facilitating growth by ensuring that support is tailored to the local contexts in which rural businesses are operating (Atherton and Price, 2008). Building on the findings of North and Smallbone (2006), a strategic approach to fostering entrepreneurial capacity alongside support for existing rural enterprise can have the widest impact as this can draw together the features of traditional rural businesses that shape perceptions of rurality with the innovation and growth potential of newer enterprises. The framework set out in this paper offers a more nuanced understanding of how the external benefits of rural businesses can support wider rural development objectives. The value created by rural businesses can also be more clearly recognised, both by rural business owners themselves and by those responsible for implementing rural policies. Without this, there is a genuine concern that many businesses that ameliorate the built and natural environment and that provide employment and key services, especially to vulnerable, less mobile groups in rural society, will continue to experience decline. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my parents for allowing me to publish this case study and for their lifelong support in enabling to be in a position where I can devote time to writing about such things. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers, firstly for not rejecting the paper on the grounds of style alone and secondly for their very helpful comments. I hope that the final paper does justice to all concerned. References Alsos, G., Carter, S., Ljunggren, E., Welter, F., 2011. The Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship in Agriculture and Rural Development. Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham. Amin, A., Thrift, N., 1994. Globalization, Institutions, and Regional Development in Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Anderson, A., Ossiechuk, E., Illingworth, L., 2010. Rural small businesses in turbulent times; impacts of the economic downturn. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation 11 (1), 45e56. Anthopolou, T., 2010. Rural women in local agrofood production: between entrepreneurial initiatives and family strategies. A case study in Greece. Journal of Rural Studies 26 (4), 394e403. Ateljevic, I., Doorne, S., 2000. Staying within the fence: lifestyle entrepreneurship in tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 8 (5), 378e392. Atherton, A., Hannon, P., 2006. Localised strategies for supporting incubation. Strategies arising from a case of rural enterprise development. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development 13 (1), 48e61. Atherton, A., Price, L., 2008. Can experiential knowledge and localised learning in start-up policy and practice be transferred between regions? The case of the START network. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development 20 (4), 367e385. Atterton, J., Bosworth, G., 2009. “Neo-endogenous Development and the Rural Economy”, a Paper Presented at the 7th Rural Entrepreneurship Conference, Rheged Centre, Cumbria, May 2009. Atterton, J., Bosworth, G., 2012. Entrepreneurial in-migration and neo-endogenous rural development. Rural Sociology 77, 254e279. Atterton, J., 2007. The “strength of weak ties”: social networking by business owners in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Sociologia Ruralis 47 (3), 228e245. Atterton, J., 2008. Rural Proofing in England: a Formal Commitment in Need of Review. Discussion paper 20. Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University. www.ncl.ac.uk/cre/publish/discussionpapers (accessed 27.05.11.). Bell, M., 1994. Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Bennett, K., Phillipson, J., Lowe, P., Ward, N., 2001. The Impact of the Foot and Mouth Crisis on Rural Firms: a Survey of Microbusinesses in the North East of England. Centre for Rural Economy Research Report. Newcastle University. Bosworth, G., Farrell, H., 2011. Tourism entrepreneurs in Northumberland: the role of in-migrants. Annals of Tourism Research 38 (4), 1474e1494.

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