Metodología para el análisis de la gestión financiera en pequeñas y medianas empresas (PYMES)[Methodology for the analysis of financial management in small and medium sized enterprises (SMES)]

Generally, most of the research related to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) tends to focus on analyzing the obstacles and challenges they confront outside the firms. Lesser extent, some authors discuss issues regarding to internal processes and their planning and control systems. This paper proposes a methodology for analyzing the financial management process of SMEs, as a tool for diagnosis and design of improvement programs. It is based on exploratory research and literature review of SME and financial matters, to propose a questionnaire that measures financial management qualities; it was validated by judges and assessed as reliable in pilot test. After that it was applied to a sample of 64 Venezuelan SMEs (cross-sectional design), to show how the suggested methodology works. The results for this sample show a trend of medium presence of financial management process in these companies, with low and medium levels of articulation between its components. We conclude that the proposed methodology is useful for analyzing different components of financial management in SMEs, and that its application can be replicated in different regions and countries that allow a comparative analysis of internal processes in organizations.