Competitive Integration of Social Tourism Enterprises Through an Organizational Management System: The Case of El Jorullo in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco

Abstract

Ejidos are a unique form of land ownership in Mexico based on cooperative and mutual aid, characterized by management problems. Some ejidos have given rise to social tourism enterprises (STE), which seek to respond to local needs by carrying out traditional agricultural and livestock activities complemented by tourism. This sector requires integration to compete. The cases addressed are the STEs in the ejido called El Jorullo, a tourist destination in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. Therefore, this research’s general aim was to analyze a proposal for a strategic management system for the STEs of ejido El Jorullo based on social capital to promote their competitiveness. The methodology is qualitative, based on social network analysis (SNA) to identify the social capital of the participants of El Jorullo and their enterprises from the perspective of the theory of organizational population ecology and subsequently, the emptying of this information to feed a technology-based management system. The results indicate the six stages of the proposed system for integrating the enterprises. This allows identifying an option for STEs to become more competitive through the integration and involvement of various stakeholders.

1. Introduction

Socio-ecological systems focus on the study of the relationship between humanity and the natural world [1], which implies challenges in the understanding of complex aspects such as the economy and society in the modern era of globalization [2,3], where humans experience needs as generators of cultural, ideological, social, or ecological alterations, and changes in the environment are manifested to satisfy these needs, thus appearing entrepreneurs.

Consequently, the origin of entrepreneurship points to the resolution of problems or deficiencies of the people who give rise to it, and its promotion is one of the priority activities in government agendas and universities, taking into account its universal application to various branches of knowledge, which can provide those who practice entrepreneurship with better opportunities [4].

When we talk about entrepreneurship, we can allude to the search for one or several social benefits, both for those who generate them for the communities that host them and even for the descendants of their precursors. According to Peña [5], it can be conceptualized as follows:

Set of formally organized private enterprises, with decision-making autonomy and freedom of membership, created to fulfill the needs of their members through the market, the generation of goods and services, insurance or financing, in which both the distribution of profits or surpluses among the members and decision-making do not depend directly on the capital or individual contributions of each member, with each member having one vote, or are carried out in any case through democratic and participatory decision-making processes

[6] (p. 23).

The social economy is closely related to entrepreneurship because it involves privately organized groups operating independently and hosting volunteer members, offering valuable non-commercial services to households. Importantly, those who manage or fund these efforts do not take the surpluses generated, fostering a more equitable and community-centered approach [6].

Even though there may be various types of entrepreneurship, the classification provided by Bargsted [7] stands out in this research, who points out the term social entrepreneurship as an activity that involves the development, implementation, and support of initiatives that allow overcoming social and environmental difficulties, as well as obtaining a benefit of familiar character to a group through social-community or business activities. For this reason, this type of entrepreneurship is highly valued and well regarded in the study of organizations [8].

In the same sense, it is possible to find more specifically the STEs, which are defined by Espinoza et al. [9] (p. 31) as follows:

“…a type of collective entrepreneurial organization aimed at utilizing resources within a specific territory, whether ejidal or communal, where the management and operation of these business ventures enhance and empower the tenants. These initiatives arise as a response to the challenges of poverty within the agricultural sector”.

Due to the above definition, it is possible to identify STEs as agents of systematic change within the adaptive cycle theory of social-ecological systems, which promote states of change [10]. In rural communities, specific disruptions are generated by entrepreneurs acquiring self-adaptive social-ecological systems behavior, modifying their environment to satisfy their needs [11], and developing rural transformation [12].

At this point, it is possible to appreciate how tourism becomes an alternative for developing a specific type of enterprise. Still, it should be noted that it is also an activity that tends to enhance all sectors since it is supported by the movement of people, capital, and goods across the planet, and in this particular case, in the rural sector, allowing the advantages of natural and cultural resources present in an ejido territory for the development of enterprises [13].

The above challenges the traditional idea of the rural actor, who is valued as a food producer for human subsistence. As Chávez, Sánchez, and Fortes [14] pointed out, it is very different to become an entrepreneur and stop being a peasant compared to being an entrepreneur without ceasing to be a peasant.

One is a farmer by tradition, history, or consequence of history and has a dialectical relationship with the territory; however, given the uncertainty of the agricultural sector, farmers have found a way to complement their activities in tourism, where entrepreneurial skills are also present and developed.

It should be noted that ejidos are a form of land ownership unique worldwide to Mexico, resulting from the agrarian reforms of 1934 and 1992. According to Morett-Sánchez and Cosío-Ruiz [15] and Fernández [16], some of the benefits implicit in ejidos are as follows:

(a)

They offer solid agricultural production, and in their territories are located most of the forest areas, mountains, mangroves, coasts, mines, water, and various natural resources;

(b)

Those who are mainly engaged in non-agricultural activities have great potential due to their natural resources, traditional know-how, and knowledge that, if supported, could be avenues for local development;

(c)

Ejidos and communities have great potential to produce and conserve biodiversity;

(d)

A figure that emerges to convert farm workers into free wage earners, not tied to living off their salary;

(e)

Their lands are inalienable and cannot be seized under conventional procedures.

On the other hand, the authors mentioned in the previous paragraph also note a series of disadvantages inherent to the ejido system, such as the following:

(a)

They have significant economic and ecological potential. However, given their considerable shortcomings, agricultural and forestry production is complex;

(b)

They are not homogeneous since there are significant differences in the allocation of resources;

(c)

The absence or weak cooperation resulting from a family organization prevents the implementation of strategies for the conservation, maintenance, and restoration of endemic resources, where families focus only on harvesting; and

(d)

The productivity of agricultural labor in Mexico is very low.

Nevertheless, the people who make up the ejidos within the rural sector, even when they have that cultural and natural diversity typical of their regions, also suffer high rates of illiteracy and poverty [17,18]. These conditions within the tourism market are associated with low competitiveness.

In addition, these limitations hinder the sustainable and organized use of available natural resources [5]. As in this case, the ejido El Jorullo, which has managed to incubate within its territorial extension three STEs without collaboration schemes, is necessary for a sector as competitive as tourism.

Tourism, as a dynamizing agent of peripheral economies, positively influences the creation of comparative advantages between sectors. Thus, this activity in the rural world chains the various economic sectors vertically or horizontally to give a surplus value to the territorial landscape for tourist use. Hence, the territory of El Jorullo could become a vital tourism resource to complement traditional activities with new economic activities such as rural tourism [9] present in the ejidos.

Given the problematic situation described above, where the need was identified for the STEs as social-ecological systems of the ejido El Jorullo to establish collaboration schemes and joint efforts to be more competitive, the general objective of this research was to analyze a proposal for a strategic management system for these enterprises based on social capital to promote their competitiveness.

This research contributes to the understanding of socio-ecological systems management in two ways. The first is in the search for the competitiveness of this type of system seen in the STEs of El Jorullo in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, and México through organizational management systems. The second is the association of the terms mentioned in the practical field incorporating the theory of organizational population ecology that studies socio-ecological systems with a novel approach that includes social capital and SNA.

2. Theoretical Background

One of the determining aspects to achieve competitiveness at the business, social-ecological systems, or micro level is that for all organizations, there will be an environment in which there will be various stakeholders, so there is a need to investigate the environment in which organizations are involved, for which the perspective of population ecology is present, where Daft [19] (p. 188) indicates that this theory “differs from others in that it focuses on diversity and adaptation in a population of organizations”.

The previous author specifies that a population is understood as “a group of organizations engaged in similar activities with similar resource and output utilization schemes” for these purposes. For its analysis, the population ecology model of organization considers certain limitations for organizational change, which emanate from heavy investments in machinery, productive plants, specialized personnel, conflicting points of view among decision-makers, and limited information.

The characteristics that led the organization itself to success justify the procedures employed and the difficulty of transferring to the corporate culture [20,21]. To address such limitations, Hannan and Freeman [22], as well as Daft [21], refer to the theory of organizational population ecology, which seeks collaboration between entities, in this case, three ventures to take advantage of the tourist landscape, which posits a three-stage process of organizational change as follows:

-

Variation: where new and varied forms appear in an organizational population.

-

Selection: contemplates a new organizational form and its aptitude to survive in its environment.

-

Retention: is the preservation and institutionalization of selected organizations to remain in the environment.

These three phases can be better explained in the practical field, as in this case, for the understanding of a given reality in which the enterprises live, through the theory of social capital, where the first to use the term was Lyda Judson Hanifan in a rural context, pointing out the following concerning social capital:

...these tangible elements play a fundamental role in a village’s daily life. They include goodwill, camaraderie, mutual support, and social connections among individuals and families that constitute a social unit—the rural community—where the school serves as its logical focal point

[23,24].

In a contemporary way, studying the characteristics of a given social network is supported by social capital. It can also be understood as “the capacity developed by the different actors in the system to establish relationships of trust, which allow them to build those links that give rise to processes” [25] (pp. 18–19).

Another doubt that emerges in the face of such complex theoretical models as organizational population ecology and social capital is how they can be applied to solve problems or address areas of opportunity in ventures to make them more competitive. For this, the social network analysis (SNA) arises.

SNA is a way of analyzing the interrelationships between participants proposed by Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman [26], as well as Borgatti, Everett, and Johnson [27]. Multiple units of measurement applicable to a given network of actors are proposed, of which three stand out in particular for categorizing critical actors or stakeholders in a network: proximity, intermediation, and centrality [28].

After recognizing the influence exerted by each of the participants in the environment of the enterprises of the ejido El Jorullo, it was possible to compare various strategic management models (

Table 1. Model comparison.

Stages	Rodríguez (2016)	Rosas (2007)	Wheelen (2013)
	Not applicable	1. Diagnostic	Not applicable
Nature of business	1. Develop mission and vision	2. Strategic factors	Not applicable
	1.1 Business Model	Not applicable	Not applicable
	1.2 Mission	2.1 Mission	Not applicable
	1.3 Vision	2.2 Vision	Not applicable
	1.4 Values	2.3 Values	Not applicable
	1.5 Competitive profile	Not applicable	Not applicable
External factors	2. External evaluation	3. Opportunities and Threats Analysis	1. Environmental Analysis
	2.1 Great environment	Not applicable	1.1 External: opportunities and threats
	2.2 Nearby environment	Not applicable	1.2 Natural, social, and industrial environment
	2.3 Evaluation of external factors	Not applicable	Not applicable
Internal factors	3. Internal evaluation	4. Strengths and Weaknesses Analysis	1.3 Internal: strengths and weaknesses
	3.1 Value chain	Not applicable	1.4 Structure, culture, and resources
	3.2 Evaluation of internal factors	Not applicable	Not applicable
Strategy generation	4. Formulation of strategic objectives and strategies	5. Quality Policy	2. Strategy formulation
	4.1 Objectives, strategies, and indicators	Not applicable	2.1 Mission
	4.2 Strategic map	Not applicable	2.2 Objectives
	4.3 MECA Matrix	Not applicable	2.3 Strategies
	4.4 FODA Matrix	Not applicable	2.4 Policies
Study of strategies	5. Choice of strategies	Not applicable	Not applicable
	5.1 Strategic position analysis	Not applicable	Not applicable
	5.2 Internal/external analysis	Not applicable	Not applicable
	5.3 Evaluation of strategies	Not applicable	Not applicable
	5.4 Strategy selection	Not applicable	Not applicable
Start-up	6. Plans and budgets	Not applicable	Not applicable
	6.1 Actions	Not applicable	Not applicable
	6.2 Tactical plans and budgets	Not applicable	Not applicable
	6.3 Implementation	Not applicable	3. Implementation of strategies
	Not applicable	Not applicable	3.1 Programs, budget, and procedures
	Not applicable	Not applicable	4. Evaluation and control
	Not applicable	Not applicable	4.1 Performance

Source: Adapted from [29] (p. 103).

) proposed by Verduzco [29] to select the one that best fits the requirements of the integration system that allows the three entities to become more competitive collectively [11], which, at the same time, strengthens rural productivity [30].

The difference between the three models lies in the fact that each of them conceives each of its parts in different stages, which can be divided into the nature of the business, external factors, internal factors, strategy generation, strategy study, and implementation. In the above comparison, some models have more elements than others. Still, in general, the model of Rodriguez [31] is the most complete, considering that it can include the three ventures under study and is supported by a technology-based alternative.

Implementing this approach in practical scenarios is more efficient, particularly for a group of enterprises that leverage their competitiveness by offering traditional activities rooted in their local environments. This means that their natural ecological systems are integral to their economic and social benefit relationships [32].

This helps address several global issues, including land degradation, resource depletion, and overcrowding in urban areas [33], land abandonment [34], and rural problems such as rural recession, poverty, and social inequity [35,36].

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Context and Cases of the Study

Puerto Vallarta is one of the most internationally relevant tourist destinations. It integrates the Banderas Bay region (Figure 1) with some locations in the state of Nayarit. Tourists are welcomed by land, air, and sea due to the beach and mountain attractions that are well received by visitors, together with an important tourist and gastronomic offer.

Within the territory above, there is an essential diversity of STEs that enjoy the critical economic and tourist activity of Banderas Bay, as shown in

Table 2. Rural tourism entities in the municipality of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.

Company or entrepreneurship	Name	Typology	Community	Status	Activity
	Mundo Nogalito Canopy Tour	Private	Las Juntas y los Veranos	Active	Adventure tourism
	Canopy River	Social/public	El Jorullo	Active	Ecotourism and rural tourism
	Canopy Playa Grande	Social/public	Playa Grande	Active	Ecotourism and rural tourism
	Canopy El Edén	Private	Agua Caliente	Active	Ecotourism
	Rancho El Capomo	Private	Las Palmas	Active	Ecotourism and rural tourism
	Rancho El Charro	Private	Playa Grande	Active	Ecotourism
	Grupo Sustentable las dos aguas/Jorullo Paradise	Social/public	Los Llanitos, El Jorullo.	Active	Ecotourism
	Rancho El Coyote	Social/public	El Jorullo	Active	Rural tourism

Source: [38] (p. 92).

proposed by Peña et al. [38]. They have been able to take advantage of the benefits of this destination around its mountains, since these organizations have their bases of operation and recreational activities in these mountain ranges, where one of the main challenges they have faced is the necessary management skills to make themselves known to the tourist market.

For this reason, a system that allows resources to be organized into concrete actions generates indicators and considers the assignment of area representatives responsible for compliance as an element that would allow the development of managerial skills that would benefit the ejido’s entrepreneurs.

To make it work, it is essential that the entrepreneurs involved, who are the protagonists, be involved in its construction and design so that their interest in its subsequent application can be secured, all of this from the leadership of the ejido committee.

Several of the initiatives referred to above are located within an area known as El Jorullo, which is one of the 77 localities within the municipality of Puerto Vallarta, which has the same name as the ejido, located southeast of this municipality, at the geographical coordinates 20° 33′ 38″ North and 105° 08′12″ West (Figure 2), at an average altitude of 940 m above sea level [39].

The ejido of El Jorullo was formed due to a petition presented by the town’s neighbors on 5 September 1939 to obtain land endowment. The Mixed Agrarian Commission issued an opinion under the consideration of the State Governor, authorizing it on December 14 of the same year with an area of 4650 hectares, granted to 115 individuals. The last record indicates that rural space had 180 ejidatarios in 2017 [40].

Within this ejido, there are three entrepreneurial initiatives in different degrees of consolidation in the market, which, according to Díaz [41], serve complementary market segments, as in the case of Canopy River in ecotourism, Rancho El Coyote in cultural tourism, and Jorullo Paradise that focuses on rural tourism.

According to Sánchez [18], the Canopy River project managed to consolidate 35 of the ejidatarios that make up the ejido El Jorullo and is legally considered the 36th member of the ejido as a whole. In addition, its workforce was initially comprising people from neighboring towns.

This generates a total of 78 jobs divided into 72 permanent and six temporary jobs. Of these, only two are external to the zone, who act as legal and accounting advisors, accounting for only 2.5% of the total.

Sánchez [18] mentions that by 2017, Canopy River, one of the ventures in the ejido, had 300 sets of helmets, pulleys, and harnesses from certified suppliers; 13 lines for Canopy that make a total of 4 km; 50 certified pieces of equipment for rappelling; 40 ATV vehicles and 3 RZRs; 10 different vehicles for transporting staff and visitors; the restaurant “Los Coapinoles”; and the theater “Claro de Luna”.

Moreover, it provides ongoing training to its personnel with 10 to 12 courses per year, covering from 50% of the cost to 100% in the development of various attitudes and skills necessary for tourist services, all of this for its current workforce of 85 permanent workers, 20 temporary workers, and 200 indirect jobs, all under the efforts of its organizational structure (Figure 3).

According to the website of Canopy River, the entity currently has a wide range of activities such as ATV tours, zip lines, or all-terrain vehicles such as Tour de Mulas, Jorullo Bridge RZR Tour, River Expedition, Zip Line!, and ATV Tour. Combos such as ATV–Zip Line, Jorullo Bridge–ATV–Zip Line, Jorullo Bridge–RZR–Zip Line, and RZR–Zip Line, as well as specific tours such as the Jorullo Bridge ATV Tour and Jorullo Bridge Hiking Tour and shows such as “Fiesta In The Mountains”. Also included are specialized events and a restaurant with a buffet option called “Los Coapinoles”.

In the case of the Jorullo Paradise initiative, López, González, and Villanueva [42] indicate that it is made up of 34 members of the ejido, and the ejido as a legal entity is the 34th member. Some of the members of this initiative are also part of Canopy River and provide advice on ecological, rural, and adventure tourism activities to the Jorullo Paradise administration.

Jorullo Paradise comprises a series of attractions developed sustainably, integrating each element without impacting the natural environment. This is fundamental for creating activities and experiences that national and foreign tourists enjoy. At the same time, developing new products in this venture complements the activities of the other initiatives (Canopy River and Rancho Coyote).

In that sense, López, González, and Villanueva [42] indicate that the activities offered by Jorullo Paradise are as follows:

-

An Environmental Management Unit (UMA) that currently has deer and wild boar.

-

A restaurant that uses local products to make traditional Mexican food. Its menu highlights these ingredients.

-

Sale of organic products made in the region.

-

Lodging system in cabins, nine in total.

-

Twelve hot springs pools.

-

Interpretive trails.

-

Farms.

-

Agricultural spaces.

-

Bird-watching walks.

This initiative enables another group of members of the ejido El Jorullo to benefit from the advantages that their territory provides, as in this case are the hot springs, and has only been possible through the coordination of collective efforts of the 34 ejidatarios that make up the organization, whose main benefit is reflected in the conservation of this resource, all this through a sustainable administration and management, thanks to the fact that from its origins the initiative was born as an Environmental Management Unit (UMA, for its acronym in Spanish).

The purpose of the creation of a UMA is established as the sustainable use of the resources present in the delimitation of the organization, such as thermal water, flora, and fauna, and this last point is materialized in a specific area for the conservation and protection of deer and wild boars, resulting in the sensitization of the population and the clientele to the natural care of the species, and this adds the potential of tourist products club contemplating the tourist business ecology [43].

These initiatives have generated a demonstration effect that has been seen as novel and, at the same time, essential for local community development; proof of this is the appearance of the Rancho El Coyote initiative, which is an STE with a differentiated vocation and is related to the Folklore offer, which, according to Verduzco [29], is located in the ejido El Jorullo and annexes, in the municipality of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco; of the town of Las Guásimas, and data from the last population census recorded by INEGI in 2010 records a total population of 115 inhabitants of this town.

It is important to emphasize that this initiative arises precisely to respond to a series of social problems present in the region, and given the characteristics of this initiative, the ability to form chains or collective ecosystems that act to reconfigure the functionality of tourism within the ejido territories can be appreciated.

In this case, the event “Fiesta en la Montaña”, where visitors and tourists can enjoy the daily culture of the ejido in activities such as “charrería”, donkey racing, cockfighting, milking, planting or cultivation of grains, handmade tortilla production, and corn milling. All of this generates an essential improvement in the quality of life of the members of Rancho El Coyote since their work environment is close to their family, which impacts improving their quality of life [43,44].

In the case of Rancho El Coyote, it has products based on the characteristic identity of the region, which contributes to the preservation of the culture and, at the same time, offers recreational products that the inhabitants of the region use, members of other enterprises, and tourists, whether national or international. At the same time, this same cultural base limits the diversity of alternatives offered by this initiative, for which it needs to support and complement a series of joint products with its counterparts, Canopy River and Rancho El Coyote.

3.2. Data Source and Processing

According to Muñoz [45] (p. 127), the present research was qualitative and focused on describing the qualities and characteristics of an observed phenomenon. It studied a significant part of reality by discovering its qualities in the object of study. In this research, the level of involvement of the participants was considered for the generation of entrepreneurial organizational collaboration schemes [46].

In this sense, the ethnographic method was resorted to approach the true nature of human realities, seeking to understand social entities, human perceptions, and modern realities, from their reasons for origin to their existence [47].

Various data collection techniques support the ethnographic method described above. The starting point is theoretical sampling [48,49], where it was necessary to review a significant number of elements that separately are extensive so that their chaining was vital to generate a contribution to knowledge, that is, a way to address a problem or opportunity, to subsequently develop interviews supported by the instrument proposed by Arriagada, Miranda, and Pávez [50], mostly with semi-structured and dichotomous questions to identify how social capital occurs in a given system.

This made it possible to determine the level of influence of the stakeholders identified through the NetDraw 2.168 and UCINET 6 programs, a growing research trend in management and economics [51,52,53], and to conclude with the categorization of the type of interaction present among the participants, using this information for the subsequent step.

The next step was feeding the Rodriguez [31] system, which proposes six stages developed in their entirety: I. develop mission and vision; II. external evaluation; III. internal evaluation; IV. formulation of strategic objectives and strategies; V. choice of strategies; and VI. plans and budget. The comparison of models shown in the theoretical background section showed that the model proposed by Rodriguez [31] was the most appropriate, and the information was entered into the system in collaboration with members of the ejido as part of the ethnographic method.

4. Results and Discussion

4.1. Social Capital, Social Network Analysis, and a Socio-Ecological System of Entrepreneurship

The analysis of the relational dynamics of the ejido El Jorullo through the study of social networks proposed by Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman [26] responds to what is established by the theory of organizational population ecology [20,22] by involving aspects of the environment in which the enterprises are immersed as part of the planning process, envisioning social capital [23,24,25] as an additional usable resource.

In this case, to feed a management system for a set of enterprises, taking as a starting point the review of the graph showing the relational dynamics of the actors in the tourism sector related to the ejido El Jorullo (Figure 4) pointed out by Peña, Espinoza, and Plascencia [28], providing elements for greater competitiveness and better management of the resources available to the socio-ecological systems of entrepreneurship present within the ejido [1,2,3,10,11], generating rural transformation [12].

As seen in the previous illustration, this ego network tends to be closed since most of its connections are interrelated with two or more participants, and the more distant nodes that contain only one relationship are in the minority. This allows us to distinguish that the identified actors are primarily in constant communication, which may be due to the sector’s dynamism.

The central participants are Jorullo Paradise, Rancho El Coyote, Canopy River, the ejidal figure, the external consultant, and the municipal tourism directorate; however, as shown in

Table 3. Measures of centrality, intermediation, and network proximity.

Actors	Centrality	Intermediation	Network Proximity
EJIDO EL JORULLO	0.276	46.276	43.939
CANOPY RIVER	0.345	12.701	48.333
RANCHO COYOTE	0.224	8.114	41.429
JORULLO PARADISE	0.224	5.985	42.029
TRAVEL AGENCIES	0.172	4.743	37.179
STREET VENDORS	0.073	2.477	35.802
TOURIST GUIDES	0.078	1.83	50.877
REPS	0.086	0.796	35.802
MUNICIPAL TOURISM DEPARTMENT	0.108	0.767	38.158
RAMÓN GONZALEZ LOMELÍ (CONSULTANT 1)	0.052	0.474	36.709
VALLARTA VERDE	0.022	0.391	34.524
LOCAL DEPUTY	0.009	0.24	29
NATIONAL FORESTRY COMMISSION	0.039	0.164	34.94
JOSÉ MARIO MOLINA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY	0.026	0.14	34.94
UNIVERSITY OF GUADALAJARA (CUCOSTA)	0.052	0	35.802
PROJECTSMAN	0.022	0	34.94
HOTEL BUSINESSMEN	0.103	0	36.25
CRUISE SHIP MANAGEMENT	0.129	0	36.709
MEXICAN INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SECURITY	0.069	0	34.524
TAX ADMINISTRATION SERVICE	0.069	0	34.524
EMPLOYER’S CONFEDERATION OF THE MEXICAN REPUBLIC	0.026	0	34.524
SECRETARY OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT	0.017	0	34.524
CARLOS GUZMAN (CONSULTANT 2)	0.017	0	34.524
AIRLINES	0.060	0	35.802
STATE GOVERNMENT	0.022	0	35.802
NATIONAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE	0.013	0	34.524
SECRETARY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND TRANSPORTATION	0.004	0	33.333
CYCLIST GROUP	0.034	0	34.524
NATIONAL FINANCIAL	0.009	0	33.333
CREDIT UNION	0.004	0	33.333

Source: Adapted from [28] (pp. 62–63).

, a more in-depth analysis is required to determine the actors with the most significant impact at the individual level.

The organizational management system proposed by Peña [5] responds to a reality at a given time in the ventures involved, namely, the ejido El Jorullo tourism cluster, an organism the system considers.

Driven by the efforts and synergies generated by Canopy River, Jorullo Paradise, and Rancho Coyote, these enterprises take place in an ejido space and are collective initiatives that seek to improve local inhabitants’ living conditions by generating employment in the region under decent conditions and promoting stakeholder engagement.

This system considers the resources and capacities of three enterprises, visualizing the entire strategic context for a single, cohesive tourist destination. This destination is in condition to compete locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. It also acknowledges the various stakeholders in its environment that facilitate this integration. The parts that make up the system are divided into six sections, as shown in Figure 5.

4.2. Parts of the System

4.2.1. Develop Mission and Vision

This first section considers all the strategic planning that guides the organization’s efforts and resources to achieve its objectives by identifying the business model that considers beneficiaries, supply, relationship, communication, income, resources, activities, substances, allies, and costs.

This makes the SNA indispensable for identifying the various stakeholders and strategically locating them according to their characteristics and influence on the ejido’s action network and its undertakings. It also makes the best use of available resources to better manage the socio-ecological entrepreneurial systems studied.

On the other hand, the mission and vision of the organization incorporate the business, clients, and capabilities and are attractive in their approach so that they can be directed, operated, and known by all employees. This contributes to the competitive profile by strengthening the critical factors of competitive success in contrast to the leading competitors.

4.2.2. External Evaluation

The external evaluation initially considers aspects of the larger environment, such as political, economic, sociocultural, scientific, technological, environmental, and legal, to identify and weigh risks and opportunities that may impact strategy and decision-making. In this case, the socio-cultural, scientific, and technological trends had the most significant impact on the case study due to tourism’s inherent dynamism.

Subsequently, the immediate environment is reviewed to consider the intensity of rivalry, the bargaining power of customers and suppliers, potential competitors, and substitute products to maintain the offer in force or update some tourism products when the situation or the market so requires. This section later examines a visualization of the opportunities and threats posed by key external factors and their corresponding importance scores to allocate a specific level of attention and resources to them.

The internal evaluation considers the organization’s resources and capabilities embodied in the value chain, where support activities (management, finance, technology, quality, and human talent) and the primary activities implicit in an organizational system (inputs, operations, outputs, marketing, and after-sales service) are recognized. This allows scoring solid and weak areas for attention.

The main strength in this regard is the natural environment that the ejido preserves as its main attraction. In contrast, its main weakness is the lack of guidelines for the operational integration of the three enterprises and knowledge transfer schemes.

4.2.3. Formulation of Strategic Objectives and Strategies

This third section allows for generating organizational objectives considering the advantages or disadvantages of the previous section, which provides for developing and visualizing causes and effects, as well as the impact of each one of them on the critical success factors of the sector, formulating appropriate indicators for their measurement through normal values, warning values, and critical values, and assigning responsible persons within the organization for the fulfillment of the indicators. In this case, five objectives were generated for the enterprises studied.

Another tool in this section is the contrast of the established objectives and their classification in a strategic map from the financial perspective (develop objectives and goals according to the capacities of each organization), customer perspective (design joint offer packages among the enterprises), internal processes perspective (establish a joint management system for El Jorullo tourist destination; implement an information system throughout the group), and learning–growth perspective (carry out joint promotion strategies).

This is followed by a MECA matrix that orients the objectives to maximize strengths, exploit opportunities, correct weaknesses, and confront threats, as well as a SWOT matrix for identifying strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats inherent to the organization. From this process, 49 actions to be taken by the joint ventures emerge.

4.2.4. Choice of Strategies

This fifth section reviews the previous actions and begins with the strategic position matrix. Given the competitive characteristics of the companies analyzed, this matrix places the group in a zone of low strength in the immediate environment, suggesting aggressive and competitive strategies such as integration and joint product and market development.

Another tool that validates the information is the internal-external matrix, which places the group in quadrant V, an intermediate between a medium evaluation of external factors and a medium evaluation of internal factors. This suggests maintaining product development and market penetration.

Due to the large number of actions, the most important ones are evaluated and selected according to their impact on the five strategies mentioned above, as well as their desirability, resources needed for their implementation, speed of implementation, and level of preparation for their execution.

4.2.5. Plans and Budgets

The last section reviews the feasibility of the plans, actions, and objectives according to the organization’s budget. It starts with a schedule of the actions to be implemented, as well as the budget items that will guarantee their development and the amounts of money to be spent at each stage.

To evaluate the strategy’s execution, an “8C” analysis is performed, where the behavior, knowledge, culture, work environment, coaching, compensation, career, and communication of each strategy and action are reviewed, weighting their level of risk against and scoring their objectivity on a scale of 0 to 100.

In the system implemented, only one risk activity was identified under the compensation criterion, where the preventive action of designing events and programs to stimulate worker productivity was generated.

4.3. Discussion

For the design of the system proposed by Peña [5], it was essential to consider the contribution of the organizational population ecology proposed by Hannan and Freeman [20,22], which is content that considers three stages (variation, selection, and retention), which are adequately adjusted to the approach of the social capital theory [23,24] based on the interaction of individuals in a given environment.

The adjustment between theoretical contributions mentioned above becomes tangible for practical application purposes in socio-ecological entrepreneurial systems [1,2,3,10,11] through the SNA proposed by Borgatti, Everett, and Freeman [26] and updated by Borgatti, Everett, and Johnson [27], in which individuals’ ties are assigned measurement values such as closeness, intermediation, and centrality.

With the SNA measurement values, it is possible to better define the most appropriate form of organizational integration for a given set of enterprises whose organizational form tends to have organizational problems [16,31,44] and to provide a solution to the ejidos’ “own everything and be responsible for nothing” approach.

The system delimits the actions to be carried out with their respective indicators and indicated responsibilities for achieving the joint objectives, thus becoming an advanced instrument for planning and evaluating results for the boards of directors of each enterprise and the Ejido El Jorullo’s commissariat [32].

This new approach to socio-ecological systems has the potential to be applied to other rural entrepreneurial communities [11], which may have different resources, products, capacities, and skills in isolation. Through technological systems [11,34] such as the one presented here, it is possible for them to organize their work to become more competitive in an integrated manner [4,5].

This implies delimiting the channeling of these resources and assigning the activities and responsibilities that correspond to each one. This directly addresses one of the most critical weaknesses in the ejidos, which is an organization generating rural transformation [12] for the benefit of local inhabitants and their quality of life [44].

5. Conclusions

The implementation of a technology-based management system in the entities of El Jorullo, complemented with an SNA from its planning bases concerning the key actors, represents the mechanism to devise the necessary aspects in the cluster to become a destination, considering all the organizational factors, both internal and external, tactical, strategic, and operational, in such a way that it is entirely feasible for the enterprises studied to exercise collective actions for their joint participation in the markets.

However, it is essential to recognize that adopting this technology faces specific challenges derived from the culture and traditions of the ejido El Jorullo, where community values and family heritage are fundamental. This proposal recognizes the achievement of the research objective, given that the information analyzed, and the strategies designed allow for a contextual applicability that respects the local culture and adapts to the characteristics of the actors involved.

The proposed management system is conceived not only to improve competitiveness but also to revalue the traditional activities of the rural sector and, at the same time, to empower local entrepreneurs to keep their land in the hands of their families, thus increasing their productive potential in a modern context. Thus, modern competitiveness, which focused on individual improvement in the past, currently motivates cooperation to increase organizational capabilities in increasingly complex environments.

The organizational social capital addressed in this study reveals its importance in creating collaborative relationships that strengthen system adaptability in the ejido. It aligns with organizational ecology theory by allowing the environment to evolve and select adaptive participants.

Finally, the social-ecological systems management approach to tourism activity can be competitively enhanced by identifying and harnessing social capital through SNA in enterprises that seek to strengthen their collective skills and progressively adapt their practices to new technologies.

This technological transition should be accompanied by specific training programs that allow the community to accept the technology, thus encouraging the self-management of its resources in a framework of cooperation and respectful modernization.