Strategic Change· 2026Q1
Small Community Businesses in Slums: A Perspective on Kenyan Slum Networks
- 0citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Kenyan slum businesses coalesce into complex networks focused on essential goods, with cooperative societies acting as localized hubs.
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Key points
- Small community businesses in Kenyan slums form complex networks centered on essential goods and services.
- These businesses are characterized by their focus on everyday entrepreneurship involving firewood, food, labor, fish, water, and farm produce.
- While the businesses' geographical reach extends across Kenya's slums, their affiliated cooperative societies are localized.
- The study extends network theories to incorporate the relational dimensions specific to Kenyan slums.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
ABSTRACT Despite extensive research on networks, the relational dimensions and structures cocreated by small community businesses and cooperative societies through everyday entrepreneurship in slum neighborhoods remain undertheorized. Drawing upon 1166 small community businesses, we conceptualize the relational dimensions and structures underlying their slum networks in Kenya. Network analysis suggests that these small community businesses, characterized by their distinct focus on the everyday entrepreneurship involving slum essentials—firewood, food, labor, fish, water, and farm produce—coalesce into a complex geometric axis of slum networks. Their geographical reach extends across Kenya's slum neighborhoods, but the cooperative societies they are affiliated with are confined by their immediate surroundings. Thus, extending network theories of closeness, centrality, and betweenness to incorporate the relational dimensions and structures inherent in Kenya's slums, where small community businesses and cooperative societies are the heartbeat. With over a billion people in slums, this understanding establishes a baseline for social, policy, and academic applications.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Strategic Change, 2026 · DOI ↗
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