Technology and Culture in Subsistence Small Businesses

Abstract

The paper analyzes the connection between technological knowledge and organizational culture in small subsistence businesses (SSBs). It uses data from a proportional representative sample of 980 surveys in the canton of La Maná (Cotopaxí, Ecuador) to test if culture conditions the different components of technological knowledge in SSBs. This work verifies that the technological knowledge is a source of short-term and long-term performance, which confirm for SSBs previous works in intellectual capital. The study analyzes also the moderating effect of culture, verifying that culture does not condition the connection between technological knowledge with the short-term performance. It shows that culture is not a source of performance. However, when the research checks whether the effect of the technological knowledge increases the long-term performance, the results indicate that culture significantly limits this effect, suggesting that culture presents a certain opportunism, possibly because in the SSBs, entrepreneurs do not pay any attention to developing knowledge resources. The conclusions present some managerial and social implications to improve the functioning and management of SSBs.