Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The purpose of this research was to carry out an analysis of the number of employees demanded in the Ecuadorian manufacturing sector during the 2010-2019 period, given that it is one of the three sectors with the greatest capacity to generate jobs. However, in recent years it has shown less dynamism. The data provided by the Superintendence of Companies, Securities and Insurance made it possible to establish logarithmic variables of the wage bill, sales as a proxy variable for production and net fixed assets as a proxy variable for Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFKF). Using panel data, a fixed effects model was estimated using the Ordinary Least Squares method. The results showed that with a 1 % increase in sales, ceteris paribus, the number of workers hired increased by 0.22 %. In addition, the sales variable was the variable that most influenced the hiring of personnel. It was also possible to show that, in the face of a 1 % variation in the wage bill, ceteris paribus, hiring varied by 0.33 %. Finally, a change of 1 % in the variable net fixed assets, ceteris paribus, caused a variation of 0.003 % in the number of employees. However, it was not an individually significant variable.

The present research aims to identify the differences and similarities that may exist between the variables associated with the logistics management of business organizations based on their size. For this, a comparison was made between 992 companies in Ecuador, where four types of companies were represented: micro, small, medium and large, in proportion to the structure that the composition of the country’s companies presents. The results showed, by applying a hypothesis test to verify the equality of means, the existence of statistically significant differences in the levels of analysis in variables associated with administrative functions, supply processes, storage, production, distribution and reverse logistics. It was shown that the degree of development of logistics activity is very limited in micro and small companies. Therefore, the body of knowledge and methodological instruments available for business administration must be adapted with caution when applying them in the context of small organizations.

The evolution of the global world has been driven mainly by international trade, improving the quality and level of development of the nations that intervene in this process, development by which companies through a detailed plan creating conditions to enter the international market; however, the beginning of the pandemic was due to the implementation of drastic biosecurity measures and border clearance, which in turn gave rise to a large commercial activity around the world, causing a crisis of containers for exporting products. The investigation aims to analyze the international crisis of containers in banana exports in Ecuador during the year 2021, through the documentary review. This type of study has a qualitative approach through analytical-synthetic, synthetic and inductive-deductive theoretical methods. The results obtained indicate that the banana industry has suffered a considerable reduction in its exports and production, as a result of the delay in the shipment of materials and raw materials, and the limited supply of containers as such; However, the sector has managed to adapt to all international measures and gradually recover the commercial activity and economic stability of this fundamental pillar.

One of the main problems of economic theory is to identify how consumers construct their preferences. In order to generate empirical evidence on the application of the revealed preference theory, a descriptive analysis of preferences for running shoes from the consumer's point of view is presented with the objective of identifying the factors that determine their preferences. For this purpose, through a non-probabilistic snowball sampling, an online survey was applied to people between 18 and 65 years of age residing in the city of Quito. The main results indicate that the following factors are considered the most important when choosing a running shoe: price, quality, aesthetics of the shoe (model, brand and color), and attention of the salesperson and the recommendation of a family member, friend or trainer. On the other hand, there are certain variables such as gender, age, income, consumer personality and type of athlete that alter consumer preferences in relation to running shoes and that have been incorporated into the research analysis.

Currently, in Ecuadorian legislation, safety and health at work has marked notable changes to improve the working conditions of workers through laws and regulations to protect them against occupational risks, the objective is to do so before they are reached to materialize and therefore may cause damage to the health of workers. According to the theoretical analysis carried out, the basic elements of an occupational health and safety management system and its respective implementation methodology are proposed in the Macedonia Catering Services company of Santo Domingo city. This work originates from the absence of internal regulations, technical guides and instruments that regulate adequate management to safeguard the integrity, health and life of personnel. With this legal framework, the company under study is obliged to transform the way it has been managing the health and safety of workers. In this way it will be possible to increase the level of performance by improving the working conditions of the staff.

The present work is oriented to carry out an analysis through a survey aimed at knowing and exploring the repercussions of teleworking in times of the Covid-19 Pandemic in the educational field, specifically for the case of teachers of the Faculty of Business Sciences of the Technical University of Machala. That is, to determine the challenges and problems they faced in the implementation of the teleworking modality as a result of the government's declaration of social distancing due to the possible contagion of the Covid-19 virus in 2020. The research work was carried out with an approach descriptive-exploratory, considering the responses to the survey sent online to teachers of the Faculty of Business Sciences of the Technical University of Machala. The results obtained point to an increase in working hours and work overload, teachers say they feel physically and mentally tired, many of them have presented ailments and discomfort due to the constant time they spend sitting in front of their computers, the survey also showed a imbalance between the time allocated for work and the development of personal and family obligations. This is due to the excess of teaching work days.

This research, applied to savings and credit cooperatives (COAC) in segment 1 of Ecuador, aims to analyze the relationship between funding structure and financial performance in a period prior to the start of the COVI-19 pandemic. For this purpose, the Panel Corrected Standard Errors Estimator (PSCE) was used. The information was obtained from the Superintendence of Popular and Solidarity Economy of Ecuador (SEPS) and from the websites of each COAC, generating a database composed of three matrices: the first related to the funding structure, the second with the characteristics COAC and the third with macroeconomic variables. The main results point to a positive, but not statistically significant, impact of wealth on financial self-sufficiency. On the other hand, it was shown that the financial resources of the public with higher cost negatively influence the performance of the COACs, suggesting the need for a less onerous funding structure for the cooperatives.

Competitiveness and its relationship with science are increasingly narrowing in countries in the process of development, but in developing countries it is a constant in the implementation of public policies for development. Measuring competitiveness will make it possible to understand the current situation of a given economic sector against another, within national borders or beyond. The purpose of this investigation is to analyze the commercial efficiency of malanga as one of the alternative export products in the country's oil sector in the United States, based on the Relative Export Advantage Index (REA) describing the exportable competitiveness of four countries. The result establishes that Nicaragua and Ecuador are competitive in the export of this tuber, while Mexico and the Dominican Republic have not achieved the first levels in the analyzed market, which has an attractive consumption project in the medium market. Additionally, the REA determines the advantages of the US market that has allowed the increase in exports of Ecuadorian malanga, which reflects results in a sector that has traditionally been dominated by traditional historical products, which in this case has not prevented it from being highlighted in a market that is knowing your potential.

In the past decade, the term Industry 4.0 has received increasing attention in both industry and academia. The manufacturing industry has evolved thanks to the digital revolution with the use of smart devices for intelligent manufacturing information systems. Working with intelligent production systems in this Industry 4.0 is a complex task that requires innovative ways of developing systems. One way to manage complexity is the use of intelligent model-driven engineering techniques. Although model-based approaches have several advantages and can be used to reduce complexity, studies to support Industry 4.0 are still limited. This article uses the bibliometric method to analyze the scientific performance of articles, countries, authors and journals based on the number of citations and cooperation networks. Most of the articles were published in conferences. The keywords industry 4.0 and model-driven engineering and embedded systems were the most used and represent the main areas of research. Most of the research related to the field was carried out in Austria and Germany. This study presents the evolution of the scientific literature on Industry 4.0 and intelligent model-based approaches and identifies areas of current research interest.

Ecuador maintains an important commercial relationship with Russia, one of the countries involved in the armed conflict. It is the main destination for exports of bananas, flowers and crustaceans. The Ecuadorian banana covers more than 50 % of the quantity demanded by Ukraine and together with Russia they capture approximately 23 % of all exported. For this reason, the objective of the investigation is to analyze the effects of the Russian-Ukraine conflict on Ecuadorian foreign trade. In the development of the investigation, the following theoretical methods were used: historical-logical and analytical-synthetic, in the bibliographic search, words related to the title of the article were used; for the analysis, data from the export and import levels with Russia and Ukraine were used in the period from the first five months between 2017 and 2022. Among the results, after the beginning of the war, the decrease in exports is shown, to its time, the increase in imports with Russia and Ukraine, respectively. It is concluded that the decrease in exports goes to the surplus supply, while the increase in FOB imports and the decrease in TM demonstrate the increase in the price of products offered by the countries involved.