INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 2 SS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 2 SS - Essay Example The Bendigo bank in Tambellup and Cranbrook is one such kind of social enterprise, rising from humble beginnings to give the two communities their identity. The creation of the community bank is attributable to two individuals, Vicki Brown and Jan Pope, after facing several challenges; they rode on motivating points to spearhead the creation of this bank in their respective community. Overcoming the Feat: Challenges and Motivations they faced. They were motivated by the lack of proper banking services that catered for the needs of the rural community, while listening to a certain show; they reaffirmed Louise Petschler’s concern over poor banking in the country. According to the latter, banking services had deteriorated to the extent that they had failed to provide fair and affordable basic services, additionally, they were providing these at high costs and with poor customer services while closing community branches. CHALLENGES The initiative by Vicki and Jane is typically a c ommercial interest although with a social context, they face numerous legal, financial, management and development challenges that a typical commercial business faces. However, due to the unique communal premise that the business is built upon, they face a considerably different set of challenges than a typical business faces (Fayolle and Harry 8). The key challenges that Vicki Brown and Jan Pope faced were stakeholder participation, balancing of their key objectives, raising finance, and recruitment of professional staff and expert advice Stakeholder participation The key stakeholders in this initiative were the 700 and 1100 members of community for the two towns Tambellup and Cranbrook respectively. Furthermore, the Bendigo Bank was an important participant in the process, this because the community bank would be a franchise of their own establishment. The process of convincing people to contribute money to investing in an enterprise that was yet to be created proved to be a daunt ing task to the two and the steering committee that was in charge of the launch. They were apprehensive that the failure of the business would subject to guilt and a lot of burden. The rural community who were to be bank’s customers was concerned about the confidentiality of their financial information; this was expeditiously addressed by the concerned parties. Pessimism that the locals had over the future of the bank coupled with the show that ABC was running at that time concerning failures of local initiatives. Balancing Key Objectives Vicki and Jan had noted that the agricultural communities in their small towns were being inconvenienced as they were forced to travel long distance to undertake this important service. The lack of facilities in the area affected several businesses in the area and not merely these two major sectors of the area’s economy; an estimated $26,000 was being lost per week to other towns. Any community initiative must strive to balance two ke y objectives, achieve the social purpose for which it was initiated and operate as a sustainable commercial entity (Kickul and Sophie 219). The problem the two initiators faced were the way in which to balance these two objectives. On the other hand, they worried that if the bank performed the first function