ABSTRACT
Local food enterprises have mainly emerged from social and environmental movements. These enterprises try to maintain and develop values contrary to standard business practices. They promote certain principles of transformation, such as less hierarchical structures, the minimization of capital requirements and decreased profit orientation. They focus on small-scale units requiring multi-skilled labor and greater customer participation which is related to new forms of social interaction, changing cost structures, stability impacts, growth limitation and new diffusion strategies. If traditional hierarchical structures are replaced by more democratic decision-making processes, then a greater effort will be required to clarify responsibilities and competencies, control processes, resolve conflicts and maintain the motivation of all those involved. Our research shows that, depending on the type, transformative enterprises have specific upper size limits, which, if exceeded, make social stabilization difficult. The diffusion process compatible with this follows the principle of a decentralized and autonomous multiplication of the organizational model rather than the concept of traditional entrepreneurial growth. In our contribution, we discuss the opportunities and challenges facing transformative enterprises in terms of cost effects and social diffusion based on supply chain analyses.
