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Paper short abstract:

Exploring the unique challenges faced by social enterprises in Cuba in balancing financial viability with social and environmental impact, this paper argues for attention to both discursive and systemic structural factors in enabling progressive developments.

Paper long abstract:

The study and practice of social enterprise is haunted by an unhelpful dichotomy between the individual social entrepreneur operating in 'the market', and various combinations of charitable, NGO and state-funded activities. This paper instead adopts the triangular typology of Defourny & Nyssens (2016), focussing on a variety of current social enterprise developments in Cuba including a charismatic individual social entrepreneur, the emergence of Non Agricultural Cooperatives, a flourishing eco-village and a scuba-diving eco-tourism enterprise. It draws upon a mixture of direct observation and discussions with key experts promoting socially responsible enterprise, supplemented with desk-research and informed by the tradition of Critical Management Studies, in particular a dual focus on both the development of discourse and the changes in structural contexts.

A key conclusion is that the prospects for social enterprise in Cuba will depend upon the continuing changes in the styles and forms of Cuban democratic representation and especially in the workplace, but balanced against a rapidly increasing tourism industry with accompanying pressures towards individualism. Secondly, the situation in Cuba exemplifies the importance of both the discourse around social enterprise and the formal and informal structures of its eco-system. Finally, taking these two points together suggests the need to combine structuralist and post-structuralist accounts of the embedding of economic activity, for instance drawing upon perspectives developing within the fields of cultural economy and activist-based diverse economies.