SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP, PARTICIPATION, CREATIVITY, AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AFFECTING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE OPERATION OF THE COMMUNITY ENTERPRISES IN RANONG PROVINCE

Community enterprises are formed by a cooperation of the government, the private sector, and the community sector, with the aim emphasizing the relocation of the production bases to be situated in the community or local areas and making them to be the community industries. This is done in order to solve the poverty problem as well as to distribute as much prosperity to the local areas as possible. Most community enterprises are unsuccessful due to a lack of management innovation in terms of manufacturing processes, product design, and marketing promotion. The objectives of this research were to: 1) study the levels of spiritual leadership, participation, creativity, competitive advantageand effectiveness of the operation of the community enterprises in Ranong Province; 2) examine the influences of spiritual leadership, participation, creativity and competitive advantage on the effectiveness of the operation of the community enterprises in Ranong Province; and 3) develop a model for enhancing the effectiveness of the operation of the community enterprises in Ranong Province. This research employed a mixed research methodology combining quantitative and qualitative methods. For the quantitative research part, the research sample consisted of 420 community enterprise entrepreneurs in Ranong Province. They were divided into 2 groups consisting of: 1) the management persons including 20 chair persons of the community enterprises in Ranong Province; and 2) 400 members of the community enterprises. The sample size was determined based on the criterion of 20 times the observed variables. They were selected via stratified sampling. Data were collected with the use of a questionnaire and analyzed with a structural equation model. As for the qualitative research component, indepth interviews were conducted, in order to confirm the quantitative results, with 17 key informants including the chair persons and members of the community enterprises.Data were analyzed with content analysis. The findings showed that:1)spiritual leadership, participation, creativity, competitive advantage, and the effectiveness of the operation of the community enterprises in Ranong Province were rated at a high level; 2) spiritual leadership, participation, creativity, and competitive advantage had an influence on the effectiveness of the operation of the community enterprises in Ranong Province, with a.05 level of statistical significance; and 3) the model for enhancing the effectiveness of theoperation of the community enterprises in Ranong Province, developed by the researcher, was called the SPCC model,consisting of S (referring to spiritual leadership), P (referring to participation); C (referring to creativity), and C (referring to competitive advantage). This model is a model for managing the community businesses in order to create competitive advantage in terms of low costs and product differentiation by utilizing unique, sustainable, and inimitable resources of the communities. The community enterprise entrepreneurs can use this model as a guideline to differentiate and create prominence and value to the products and services of the community enterprises so that they can create innovation and products through value creation which in turn generate income for the communities and enable them to be sustainably self-sufficient communities. All of these factors affect the effectiveness of the operation of the community enterprises.