Meaningful careers in social enterprises in remote Australia: employment decisions among Australian Indigenous art centre workers

Abstract

This research investigates why Indigenous workers decide to enter, stay or leave their positions in art centres that serve as important social enterprises in remote Australia. We develop a framework that integrates identity theory and push–pull theory via institutional logics, thereby extending Wry and York (2017)’s typology configurations that is applicable to other actors in the entrepreneurial eco-system, including Indigenous art centre workers. Based on a qualitative study of 72 Indigenous art centre workers employed in remote Australia, the results indicate that although art centres have dual for-profit and social missions, it is mainly pull factors related to paid, local employment aligned to vocational interests, and pro-social motives that are important in explaining why Indigenous Australians choose to work there. Career motives also explain workers’ decision to stay, while diverse pull and push factors explain why workers quit. Importantly, the factors that explain employment decisions are multi-factorial, interrelated and closely tied to the social and cultural logics of community life. The research furthers our understanding of how identity factors contribute to decisions by Indigenous art centres workers to enter, leave or stay in their role, providing a more complete understanding of HRM within the context of social enterprises.

Keywords:

• Social enterprises
• push–pull theory
• identity theory
• institutional logics
• Indigenous research perspective
• Indigenous Australians
• remote art centres

Acknowledgement

The authors like to acknowledge the support of Desart, in particular, Marlene Chisholm, the Art Worker Program Manager, who was involved in many aspects of the research, in particular, the coordination of the Indigenous researchers who were conducting the data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Consistent with the title of the article, and in line with established terminology used by academics, the Australian government and other agencies e.g. Mellor, S., & Corrigan, M. (2004), The case for change: A review of contemporary research on Indigenous education outcomes: Aust Council for Ed Research, Banks, G. (2007), Overcoming indigenous disadvantage in Australia: Productivity Commission, Sullivan, P. (2011), The policy goal of normalisation, the National Indigenous Reform Agreement and Indigenous National Partnership Agreements,’ DKCRC Working Paper, Hollinsworth, D. (2012), Decolonizing indigenous disability in Australia. Disability & Society, 28, 601–615., the term “Indigenous” has been used in this article to refer to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is also used to refer to Indigenous peoples in places other than Australia in other sections of the paper.

2 The ARIA classifies localities by their ‘remoteness’, defined as the distance along road networks to service centres (a hierarchy of urban centres with a population of 5000 people or more) (Department of Health Australia, 2001) Generally it is assumed that ‘remote’ is four hours’ or more drive from an urban centre and ‘very remote’ is usually more than four hours’ drive from a range of services and may be inaccessible by an ordinary car, this implies a non-bitumen road (ABS, 2011)

3 The Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme is a program provided by the Federal Government for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote and rural areas, enabling an Indigenous organisation to pool the unemployment benefit entitlements of individuals into direct wages for those people who work in local employment in various community development or organisation programs – in this study, art centres – as an alternative to receiving individual income support payments.

4 Humbug refers to demand for resources such as money and other materials, and is part of a system of reciprocity and expected demands for money/resources. See Nic Peterson: Demand sharing: reciprocity and the pressure for generosity among foragers Nicolas Peterson, American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 860–874).

5 Nationally IEI Art Workers’ wages and training government funding guidelines stipulate that making artworks is not an art worker’s role. However, art centre workers may be a casual/part time worker and paint in their own time at the art centre.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge the funding provided as part of this research by the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation (Ninti One) for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Economies project.