Exploring Social Entrepreneurship in San Juan Nuevo, Mexico: The Role of Social Enterprises and Leadership in the Management of Communal Resources

Abstract

"The commons is well represented by cases in which the commons is a source of raw materials harvested by the commoners and than consumed directly or marginal surpluses sold through a commodity chain to buyers, processors and marketers. Such indigenous, or peasant households, it is assumed, are rarely able to undertake the collective action necessary to undertake other functions in the commodity chain of a product. This has firmly framed the commons as an area of administrative interest in how a commons is managed by individuals, households, collectivities and states and how the benefits of such commons are allocated. However can an enterprise also be considered as a commons?

"In this paper we consider a case in which both the enterprise that purchases, transforms and sells the products of a commons is owned by the commoners. We argue that the impetus for such a strategy is one way to confront internal and external pressures on a commons. In order to understand this case we found it necessary to utilize literature regarding social and community-based enterprise to understand this form of a commons. Community-based enterprises are a specific form of social entrepreneurship in which a defined community uses the entrepreneurial process and collective action to identify and establish a venture or enterprise, using, whenever possible, available common property resources to generate local social value for the common good.

"We present our results in considering the distinctive features of a long standing (28 years), indigenous community-based enterprise, San Juan Nuevo, and its role in commons governance and management. Through an iterative process of reviewing existing literature and empirical fieldwork we develop an analytical framework that considers the internal characteristics as well as the inspiring and enabling factors of community-based enterprises. We use this framework to organize our empirical findings specific to the San Juan community-based forestry enterprise. Much of our findings extend current literature. We add to the literature in identifying the importance of entrepreneurial leadership grounded in collectively held core cultural values and the challenge of succession that faces community-based enterprises in transmitting such values between generations of leaders."