Strategic management practices in Central American micro family enterprises: The case of the commercial sector in El Salvador

Abstract

This paper analyses the characteristics of family microenterprises (San Salvador, El Salvador) regarding competitiveness, entrepreneurship, strategic design, decisionmaking process, and corporate governance practices. By applying clustering algorithms, it was possible to identify company profiles based on their strategic, entrepreneurial, and decision-making practices. Variables not used for clustering were analyzed to explain a microenterprise's inclusion in a profile. The goal of this research are to help policy makers and managers understand the behavior of family microenterprises in a very complicated socioeconomic environment and to guide policy design to promote more organized and competitive business structures in compromised socioeconomic situations.