The study provides a discussion about the leadership style of small businesses owner-managers at Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Ecuador, supported on contingency theory of leadership. And adaptation of Hershey and Blanchard questionnaire was made in order to make it clear to the target population. A total of 175 owner-managers of small businesses and 1218 employees comprised the respondents of the study. The perception of leadership style of owner-managers and employees, style range, and style adaptability and perception of the maturity degree of employees were the variables involved in the hypotheses raised. In spite of totally or partially proving the hypothesis raised, findings of the study revealed mixed support to the theory which impedes giving clear recommendations about how to behave in certain organizational situations in the context of small Ecuadorian businesses. Results of the study caution owner-managers of small businesses to consider carefully the way they behave in certain situation to the enrichment of employee motivation toward work with the purpose to obtain a better performance of their enterprises; but should avoid assuming that there are more or less appropriate leader behaviors based on the results of this research. The study constitutes a starting point to focus the research related to leadership style in small companies, considering the preponderance of this type of business in the economy of Ecuador.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to face the time post COVID-19. The pandemic impacted the SMEs with great force worsening the well-known situation of lack of resources and its tendency to disappear in the very early years of existence. This systemic crisis jeopardizes SMEs in many ways and it is necessary to find ways to emerge and survive from this crisis. This manuscript conducts a literature study on more than 100 manuscripts that present recommendations from McKinsey & Company for SMEs to face post-pandemic time. Through the application of the entropy-weight coefficient method this paper finds priorities from Ecuadorian SMEs out of essential elements proposed at the literature review, to introducing at the managing process to face post COVID-19 era.

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Previous works have demonstrated the possibilities to influence the innovation process in organizations. Although the presented initiatives have their merits, they suffer from a lack of integrated perspective. They are focused on the evaluation of the link between the innovation process and only one of the subsystems of the administration, without considering the implications of the other subsystems. The aim of this article is to define a model of structural equations that summarizes the impact of the variables related to innovation management in organizations. This article first presents the identified variables according to the analyzed literature and then shows which variables were selected by consulting experts on the field. To measure the selected variables some questionnaires were elaborated. The questionnaires were applied in 111 entities of different production sectors. A confirmatory factorial analysis was developed with the obtained measures. Thanks to this analysis, it was possible to verify the incidence of the evaluated variables in the innovation management, allowing the elaboration of the model. The proposed model shows the link between the different variables that contribute to the innovation management process. The analysis confirmed that innovation, as a construct, has a multifactorial nature. The information used as input for the elaboration of the model allowed introducing a new sequence of innovation management from the integrated management of the variables that can influence it. This integrated management ensures effective human resources management, production, and marketing. The findings confirm that innovation needs to be managed in an integrated way with the rest of the administrative subsystems rather than as an isolated process. This way of working allows obtaining better results for the organizations. Based on the multisectorial nature of the research sample, it can be assumed that the obtained results can be corroborated in several fields.

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