Commercial Management and Competition
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Commercial management and competition relationship in industrial and agroindustrial SMEs in Tundama, Colombia Relación gestión empresarial y competitividad en las Pymes agroindustriales e industriales de la provincia de Tundama, Colombia Luis Felipe Rodríguez C.1 and Lilia Teresa Bermúdez C.2 ABSTRACT RESUMEN The process of freeing trade that has been occurring in the coun- El proceso de apertura comercial que viene enfrentando el try since the late twentieth century has uncovered a number of país desde finales del siglo XX ha puesto al descubierto una weaknesses and threats facing our business organizations these serie de debilidades y amenazas que en estos tiempos deben days, in particular for small and medium enterprises (SME). The afrontar nuestras organizaciones empresariales y en especial las overall objective of this research is to analyze the relationship llamadas Pymes. El objetivo general de esta investigación es el between the Commercial Management system and competi- de analizar la relación entre el sistema de gestión empresarial y tiveness of industrial and agroindustrial SMEs in Tundama, la competitividad de las Pymes agroindustriales e industriales Colombia, in order to generate viable recommendations to de la Provincia de Tundama con el propósito de formular re- give these business organizations competitive advantages; the comendaciones viables que generen para estas organizaciones methodology used was based on a descriptive non-experimental empresariales ventajas competitivas; la metodología utilizada methodology design. Notably, the business organizations stud- se fundamentó en el uso de un diseño metodológico no experi- ied in this research have high transaction costs when accessing mental, de tipo descriptivo. Se destaca que las organizaciones input markets and services, which constitute a major obstacle empresariales objeto de la investigación, presentan elevados to advancing technology adoption. costos de transacción cuando acceden a los mercados de insu- mos y servicios, lo cual se constituye en obstáculo importante para adelantar procesos de adopción tecnológica. Key words: agroindustrial, competitiveness, small and medium Palabras clave: agroindustria, competitividad, pequeña y companies, revenue, management system. mediana empresa, rentabilidad, sistema de gestión. Introduction identification and use of continuous improvement process- es in the manufacture of products and the achievement of It is important to understand that competitiveness is the cost efficiency, which are determinants of competitiveness. biggest challenge that companies must overcome today, particularly SMEs (Portafolio, 2006a). International com- SMEs in Tundama, like in most of the country, often lack petition affects, to a lesser extent, companies that have been strategic clarity, since the entrepreneur is usually putting prepared to receive it; making technological, economic, out fires and attending emergencies, hence the definition financial or commercial changes. of the business and its competitive advantages are diluted among the immediacy of urgent matters, making the or- Small and medium agribusiness entrepreneurs of Tun- dama, Colombia must internalize the concept that being ganizations vulnerable to economic changes. competitive means being better than others, which means The overall objective of this research focused on the study of changes, efforts, perseverance and continuous improve- the impact of business management on the competitiveness ment should be the premises of management in the SMEs of agroindustrial and industrial SMEs located in Tundama, of this productive sector. in order to clarify the characteristics and dimensions af- The SME sector still thinks a lot about the risks of crossing fecting competitive performance and propose feasible and borders, to which is added the low initiative to implement viable recommendations to boost its development in this consolidation efforts of a cooperative nature that allows the region of Boyacá, Colombia. Received for publication: 15 December, 2010. Accepted for publication: 29 June, 2012. 1 Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agronomy, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Bogota (Colombia). [email protected] 2 Sectional Duitama, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia. Duitama (Colombia). Agronomía Colombiana 30(2), 297-304, 2012 In Colombia, businesses with assets that are between 501 the ignorance or misuse by entrepreneurs of government and 5,000 statutory minimum salaries or that employ be- programs and credit policy options. tween 10 and 50 workers are considered small; and medium companies have assets between 5,001 and 30,000 statutory Boyacá has been characterized as having a predominantly minimum wage or employ between 51 and 200 workers agricultural tradition, so much so, that 55% of its popula- (Article 590 of 2000, República de Colombia). tion is rural, with limited educational opportunities and infrastructure and generally little opportunity to bridge According to Barriga-Manrique (2001), in the area of lead - the gap with other departments (Semana, 2011). ership, more than half of SMEs have difficulties in defining the direction of the company due to the ignorance of instru- In the department of Boyacá, about 80% of the forms of ments that allow the development of a strategic plan and the production reported by the regional chambers of commerce inadequacy of information systems for making decisions. are concentrated in the area known as the Central Indus- trial Corridor of Boyacá, comprising the route between the From a macroeconomic perspective, competitiveness is cities of Sogamoso, Duitama, Paipa and Tunja. A high per- defined as the ability of a society to increase its wellbeing centage of these forms of production are in the productive in the face of challenges from the global economy and time areas of: crafts, publishing, metalworking, furniture and (Universidad de los Andes and Portafolio Pymes, 2004). wood, mineral processing, steel and agribusiness; notably most activity is concentrated in the productive areas of The Competitiveness Council of the United States, quoted metalworking and agribusiness (Cámara de Comercio de by Román-Castillo (2004), defines competitiveness as «the Duitama, 2010). ability to produce goods and services that meet the demand of international markets while allowing American citizens The fundamental problem for competitiveness in Boyacá is the enjoyment of a better quality of life that is continuously the profound disconnect between social, productive, and improving over the long term». political actors and the academic institutions, which mani- To Bradford (2001), competitiveness can be defined as the fests itself in a precarious organization that impedes the ability of a company, an industry or a country to remain in generation and implementation of regional development a market and enter new markets due to constant innova- projects. Private actors have not sufficiently strengthened tion. Importantly, numerous businesses there are SMEs, cooperative sector schemes that would allow them to be despite their small market share, have advantages over dynamic and to transform and promote the socio-economic competing, larger organizations. In these cases, the sources structure of the region. Moreover, the predominance of of the competitive advantage are different from production small production units (micro and SMEs) is accentuated scale and size. The better strategy for them is to focus on with low added value, meager technology for production a «niche» in which they can become a leader, regardless of processes and traditional or minimally elaborated organi- absolute size (Porter, 1999). zational structures, compounded by the lack of access to capital resources, preventing the attainment of adequate In Colombia, industrial production activity was able to levels of competition. To improve in this area, Boyacá, in expand and consolidate from the 1930s until the end of the 1999, formulated a competitiveness program carried out 1980s as a result of import substitution policies encouraging by Econometrics SA as supported by the Corporación Co- GDP growth and per capita income with relative internal lombia Internacional (CCI), which aimed to promote the stability (Ministerio de Comercio Industrial y Turismo, establishment of a continuous process of development for a 2008). group of competitive activities integrated into the national and international markets. As in almost all Colombian SMEs, those in Boyacá share similar characteristics, since they lack the vast majority Methodology and procedure of research of strategic planning that would allow them to face the challenges of current markets with stronger possibilities. This study employed a descriptive non-experimental meth- Small and medium business in Boyacá care about busi- odological design. To achieve this, we used direct observa- ness management activities in the short-term, but without tion and collected primary data through the application of establishing a concrete, coherent and practical plan to a form with a survey applied to the legal representatives of achieve permanence in long-term markets. Besides the the agroindustrial and industrial SMEs in Tundama, which above, among the most fundamental weaknesses of SMEs included the productive branches of auto-parts, construc- in Boyacá is their absence in almost all market studies and tion, smelting, plastic processing and metal mechanics. 298 Agron. Colomb. 30(2) 2012 The object of the research was