Symbiotic Relationships, Knowledge Management, and Sustainable Value at the Nexus Between Family Businesses, Cooperatives, and Rural Communities
基于嵌入性视角，通过塞浦路斯合作社关联家族企业的多案例研究，揭示了知识构建、知识转移和共生关系如何驱动经济与非经济价值的创造、占有与平衡，从而影响社区可持续性。
The creation of value is a key theme in knowledge management. Researchers have identified that in rural communities, many family businesses are members of cooperatives or other consortia. Yet, there is limited understanding about how family businesses associated with a cooperative create and appropriate value. Based on an embeddedness perspective we argue that intertwined relationships between family, business, cooperative, and rural communities could create, appropriate, as well as destroy economic and social value, which can influence sustainability. We rely on a multiple case study approach of family businesses associated with a cooperative in Cyprus. Such an approach and setting are important, as they provide an opportunity to examine multiple contextual interactions. Our findings reveal the role of knowledge construction, knowledge transfer, and symbiotic relationships at the levels of family business, rural cooperative, and local community in powering processes of economic and noneconomic value creation, appropriation, and balance, which are important for community sustainability. Implications for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, as well as future research opportunities, are presented.