A systemic approach to self-management in SMEs. Case: Mexican lodging organisations

Small and medium-sized lodging companies strongly depend on their collaborators to achieve their objectives and to be competitive. However, limitations in coordination and control mechanisms affect aspects such as primary operations, the self-management capability in the working teams and permanence in the sector previously mentioned. This article adopted the systemic approach, and under this perspective, qualitative and quantitative techniques were integrated. In this sense, the soft systems methodology was used to express a construct that suggests different relations as an alternative solution to the expressed problem. This construct was validated using partial least square path modelling. The results suggest that the proposed interactions can promote self-management in the companies under study. The implications of using the systemic approach require moving from a functionalist approach to an integral one while paying close attention to addressing human capital issues.