ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the observed diversity of terminology and understandings and presents some major social enterprise models which coexist in Mexico, and examines these models from the point of view of both their organisational dimension and their institutional context. In Mexico, three understandings of the “market-oriented social business” approach can be identified: the “Yunus-inspired social business” understanding, the “impact business/social start-up” understanding and the “B Corp” understanding. Such social enterprises are private businesses created by a social entrepreneur(s) operating under the market conventions and who aim primarily to contribute to solving a social or environmental issue through the commercialisation of a product or a service. Market-oriented social businesses are increasingly looking for capital investment through financial mechanisms as a way to scale up and grow more rapidly, some social businesses are experimenting with “social-mission-lock” mechanisms to ensure the continued prevalence of their social mission in the future. The economic activities of indigenous forest enterprises primarily derive from community logging.
