Como Obtener Competitividad En Una Pequeña Empresa Mexicana

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"How To Gain Competitiveness in a Mexican Small-Sized Company: A Systemic Approach"
Antonio Guzmán-Nacoud Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM-MTY) Mariano Jiménez # 415, Col. Alamitos C.P. 78280, San Luis Potosí, SLP, México 52 (444) 812 88 50; 812 02 13 aguzman@campus.slp.itesm.mx; tguzman@prodigy.net.mx

Abstract
Much of the recent quality tendencies andmovements have provoked that many and different models and methodologies as well, emerge in order to get more market competitiveness for companies. Total Quality Management (TQM) is, undoubtedly, one of them. However, TQM presents some adaptation problems due to Mexico’s culture. An adequate use of methodology and its model conceptualization for small and medium-sized industry, seems to be thecentral problems to address on this culture conflict, essentially, if we consider that this kind of industry is the productive support for Mexico. The purpuse of this paper is twofold. The first, is to show how this “problematique” should be addressed through a methodology with a systemic perspective. The second purpose, is to go beyond the utilization of this methodology, showing some results froman application in a small-sized company in the center region of Mexico.

Key words: Open Market, Small-Sized Enterprises, Competitiveness, Systemic Methodology, Development, México

1 INTRODUCTION Mexico is a country in a constant change, a change that searches a rapid incorporation to the global market, with the firm idea of achieving development. However, the development bases its principalcharacteristic in productivity, which settles down the beginning of the markets economy in which it could compete. Within this outline, the enterprises play a vital rol for the productivity in Mexico (Schettino & Loyola, 1994) and an in all countries (Ohmae, 1990), The enterprises are the ones to participate in the game for market competition, the productivity of their processes is the key inorder to achieve it. However, there are many ways of achieving productivity, but without any doubts, quality represents the most important manner of doing it, since it can easily be the connection between manufacturing and marketing of the enterprise (Sanjoy & Samar, 1992). Besides, according to Dr. W. Edwards Deming, quality means a form of achieving productivity, and through this, to getcompetitiveness. (Deming, 1982; Rothman, 1994) For Mexico, quality represents one of its senior challenges (Heron, 1988) and is one of the principal priorities for some of its companies (Knotts& Tomlin, 1994a).

© A. Guzmán-Nacoud

However, the majority of these companies are big and besides, one of the principal weaknesses in the Mexican enterprise is that they do not know what methodologies forquality improvement operate better in our culture (Peon, 1992). On the other hand, the main cultural problems for quality improvement in Mexico relies on individualism/colectivism, the power distance from workers-management, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity (Knotts & Tomlin, 1994b). In Mexico other additional ingredient exists to this reference, 98% of the enterprises are micro-small sized and theysustain the 60% of the labour plant (INEGI, 1994). With the recent economical pressure in Mexico, on where the new government has thrown a recesive economical program (SHCP, 2002), it is to be expected that the enterprises will get all the pressure, and with this, especially the small, will be forced to close, to fire personal, or to export in order to adequate themselves to a current environmentof economic problems and high taxes. Within this scenery, it is easy to suppose that what Mexico requires is the development of methodologies that allow it to secure the quality of its micro-small enterprises, with the idea of being able to make them competitive in an international environment. The main reason for writing the present paper is focused on trying to give the small enterprise the...