Minga as a meta-mechanism for inclusive entrepreneurship: the case of Salinas’ community-based enterprises

Purpose This study explores how the minga, an Andean indigenous communal work system, functions as a meta-mechanism for inclusive entrepreneurship. By analyzing community-based enterprises (CBEs) in Salinas, Ecuador, it examines how the minga mobilizes resources, navigates institutional complexity and fosters inclusive socioeconomic processes and outcomes. Design/methodology/approach Employing a qualitative case study, the research focuses on Salinas as a paradigmatic CBEs ecosystem grounded in the minga. Data were collected through 23 semi-structured interviews with community members and enterprise leaders, participant observation of minga events and analysis of organizational archives. Guided by the resource-based view and Bourdieu’s theory of capital conversion as complementary lenses, the study abductively uncovers the underlying mechanisms that render inclusion a constitutive feature of entrepreneurship. Findings The study reveals that minga operates across three layers: (1) a normative layer that institutionalizes reciprocity and collective welfare, countering individualistic entrepreneurial models, (2) a relational layer that fosters a heterarchical structure that integrates diverse community members and (3) an operational layer that embeds inclusion through task allocation, conflict resolution and benefit-sharing. Together, these layers form a recursive architecture in which outcomes feed back to reinforce the moral legitimacy and social trust that sustain participation. Originality/value This research shifts the analytical focus from demographic access to procedural inclusion, explaining how equity can be structurally embedded in enterprise design. Through the minga, it demonstrates that inclusion can be institutionally generated through collective resource governance rather than imposed through market integration. In doing so, the study reframes inclusion as a property of organizational design rather than as an external policy goal, offering a novel framework for analyzing inclusive ventures. The minga thus becomes more than an ethnographic curiosity, but a blueprint for reimagining entrepreneurship as a moral and communal endeavor capable of producing equitable and resilient economies.