Management strategies to maximize productivity in small businesses in La Maná
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70577/asce.v5i3.1039Keywords:
Business performance; small business management; resource-based view; asset turnover; administrative efficiency.Abstract
Small enterprises constitute the structural backbone of developing economies, although their contribution to gross domestic product tends to be lower than their share in employment generation, a gap attributable to structural limitations in managerial capabilities. This study examined the influence of administrative strategies on the productivity of small enterprises in La Maná, seeking to identify which management practices exhibit greater predictive capacity over financial and operational performance indicators. Methodologically, a longitudinal, explanatory, and quantitative design was adopted, drawing on the financial statements of 277 firms, equivalent to 774 firm-year observations, registered with the Superintendency of Companies. Two ordinary least squares models were estimated on a refined active sample of 233 firms, correcting for heteroscedasticity through robust standard errors. The first model, focused on operational productivity, yielded an adjusted R² of 0.122, with investment in human capital emerging as the only significant predictor, albeit with a negative sign. The second model, centered on asset turnover, showed a substantially superior fit, with an adjusted R² of 0.947, in which administrative intensity, investment in human capital, and administrative efficiency proved significant. These findings reveal that the different dimensions of administrative management exert differentiated effects depending on the productivity indicator under consideration, thereby ruling out a single causal mechanism and lending support to the relevance of the resource-based view in peripheral subnational contexts. It is concluded that policies aimed at fostering SMEs should articulate investment in human talent alongside simultaneous managerial professionalization.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Luis Eduardo Cando Veintimilla , Elba Elizabeth Sánchez Valencia , Gloria Evelina Pazmiño Cano , Eduardo Fabricio Cabrera Toscano
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