Differences in the economic and social contributions of private and community-owned Australian indigenous businesses

The development of Indigenous enterprises is regarded as a central strategy for improving welfare in Indigenous communities. However, the extent and relative importance of their economic and social contributions is not well understood, which negatively affects the ability of governments to determine the benefits of providing assistance to Indigenous businesses. There is also limited understanding of how these contributions differ between community and privately-owned business enterprises or if they are influenced by whether the business is located in an urban, regional or remote area. Consequently, we conducted qualitative interviews (n=38) and a quantitative survey (n=324) of Australian Indigenous community and privately-owned businesses. From our qualitative research we identified several economic and social contributions not previously identified in the literature. Our quantitative results demonstrated that both private and community-owned businesses make a range of economic and social contributions to their communities. However, economic, and to a lesser extent social, contributions were found on average to be greater among community-owned businesses.