Management skills as a competitive advantage for sustainability in small and medium-sized textile manufacturing companies

Abstract

The business world assigns management positions to individuals with skills that guarantee better results, in search of business sustainability. Therefore, companies that stand out have as managers, people with management skills, who contribute to success and competitiveness in a sustainable way. In this sense, the research aimed to analyze the skills of managers as a competitive advantage for sustainability in small and medium-sized textile manufacturing companies in Barranquilla-Colombia and Maracaibo-Venezuela. To this end, non-probabilistic sampling was applied to judgment, selecting 30 textile manufacturing companies, 15 in Barranquilla-Colombia and 15 in Maracaibo-Venezuela, using a Likert scale questionnaire with five response options, validated by four experts, with a Cronbach’s alpha reliability of 0.93. The statistical technique of discriminant analysis was used, differentiating both cities, finding significant differences between the skills of managers and business sustainability in said companies. The discriminant function makes it easier to conclude that the management skills that explain the business sustainability of these companies are: Financial management, process efficiency and people management, with Colombian companies presenting higher values in these skills. Likewise, the model that evaluates the evolution of management skills in the companies studied was established.