Determinants of the Sustainability of Inventory Management Practices in Informal Microbusinesses: An Explanatory-Propositive Model from Process Engineering and Popular Economy
Abstract
For a community to learn a new practice is a pedagogical achievement. For it to sustain that practice six
months later, without external support, is a social engineering achievement. This article addresses
precisely that second challenge: what factors determine whether inventory management practices adopted
by informal microenterprises — specifically neighborhood stores — are sustained over time after the
technical intervention that originated them concludes? Drawing on data generated by a service-learning
intervention conducted with 97 neighborhood stores across six municipalities in the Atlántico department
of Colombia, an explanatory-propositional model is constructed and validated with eight operationalized variables: tool complexity, post-intervention perceived usefulness, community social support, store owner
self-management capacity, accompaniment intensity, operational inventory efficiency, perceived
economic viability, and practice sustainability. The empirical analysis combines structural equation
modeling (SEM) with bootstrapping, K-means cluster analysis, and logistic regression. Results identify
perceived usefulness (beta = 0.48; p < 0.001), self-management capacity (beta = 0.39; p < 0.001), and tool
complexity as an inhibiting factor (beta = -0.38; p < 0.001) as the three highest-weight determinants of
sustainability. The model explains 67 % of the variance in the dependent variable (R² = 0.67) and correctly
classifies 81.4 % of microenterprises. Three sustainability profiles are identified, and a replicable technical
intervention design model is proposed to maximize the permanence of adopted practices in the informal
popular economy sector of Colombia.
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