'Business Centers as Meeting Places'

The aim is to provide feasible advice to establish/sustain responsible dialogue with stakeholders of tourism/craft sector in Otavalo canton. The research maps and recommends in two levels: tourism sector (entrepreneurs and mix-race business men) and craft sector (entrepreneurs and indigenous artisans).

The advice provides a stakeholder dialogue model that constitutes a management tool to be utilized by the project. It is an initiative of Otavalo Municipality and the Inter American Bank (2005 – 2010). The project’s chief (my client) will be in responsible to implement the recommendations.
From this perspective, the ‘Business Centers as Meeting Places’ will aim to establish/sustain cooperation relations to tackle responsible stakeholder dialogue practices in the mid/long term. The advice suggests to reconsidering the way the project’s leadership stakeholder dialogue to transfer business knowledge.

The ‘Business Centers as Meeting Places’ constitutes a business strategy to be articulated through the activation of two Commissions.

I) Community Relations Commission (integrated by Intersectorial Committee and two indigenous artisans that represent an informal craft network) to enhance the implementation of two ‘Business Centers as Meeting Places’ ‘located at the heart of Kichwa-Otavalo communities.
II) Tourism Negotiation Commission (integrated by Technical Coordinator Committee and Otavalo Tourism Board) to enhance the implementation of two ‘Business Centers as Meeting Places’ ‘located at the heart of entrepreneurs community.

The strategy will solve basically the following concerns: i) lack of representativeness of the project to dialogue with tourism-craft sector (stakeholder dialogue), ii)
lack of comprehension of values and principles of Kichwa-Otavalo ethnic to establish/sustain cooperation relations to tackle a stakeholder dialogue process. Therefore, these concerns evidence a common problem: non responsible dialogue practices that impact negatively the cooperation relations and cause a negative effect to activate business networks to ultimately support the competitiveness of tourism/craft sector.

The difference now and before is the recognition of dialogue value to activate business networks.
La diferencia entre el antes y ahora es el reconocimiento del valor del diálogo para activar redes empresariales. Thus, it constitutes a high priority to bring to the table’s of discussion the values and principles of stakeholders.

The core premise of this advisory report is to investigate/identify the role of CSR towards the idea of implementing/enhancing stakeholder dialogue practices that enable to activate business networks to ultimately support competitiveness in Otavalo canton.