An Empowerment Scale Analysis of Mexican MSMEs: Modeling with Covariance Structures

LINK: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/8/10/1817

by María de la Cruz del Río-Rama ¹,Martha Ríos-Manríquez ^2,*,José Álvarez-García ³ andMaría Dolores Sánchez-Fernández ⁴

¹

Business Management and Marketing Department, Faculty of Business Sciences and Tourism, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain

²

Finance and Administration Department, University of Guanajuato, Guanajuato 38110, Mexico

³

Financial Economy and Accounting Department, Faculty of Business, Finance and Tourism, University of Extremadura, 10071 Cáceres, Spain

⁴

Department of Business, University of A Coruña, Campus de Elviña, 15071 A Coruña, Spain

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Mathematics 2020, 8(10), 1817; https://doi.org/10.3390/math8101817

Received: 23 August 2020 / Revised: 10 October 2020 / Accepted: 12 October 2020 / Published: 16 October 2020

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Abstract

Trained human capital is a source of incalculable resources, with an impact on the results of companies. For this reason, companies must carefully consider three aspects: empowerment with the consideration of the cognitive state of their collaborators; training and compensation; and fluidity in information sharing. Although granting empowerment to collaborators has been shown to be beneficial for organizations, its adoption has not been popularized. Therefore, it remains a construct that needs to be studied and understood, considering that it is influenced by the organizational culture of companies. In this research, the main objective was to examine the factor structure of the empowerment scale from the perspective of the owner or manager of the micro, small and medium-sized companies of Guanajuato, Mexico; using the dimensions of psychological empowerment; fluidity in information sharing; as well as training and compensation. The methodology is based on the Mathematical Economy; application of mathematical methods to represent theories and analyze problems in economics. This investigation used an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to validate the proposed measurement scale. The sample is made up of 222 valid questionnaires. The CFA provided evidence that the model that best fits the data is a second-order model made up of two dimensions: self-efficacy and influence on the company’s results, which carry the psychological empowerment construct. These results make clear that although information is necessary to train human capital, cognitive variables are more important in the empowerment of human capital. View Full-Text

Keywords: empowerment scale; confirmatory factor analysis; Mexico