Knowledge management and competitiveness in the educational market: binational evidence from colombia and mexico

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Published: 2026-09-28
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21895692
Keywords:
Knowledge management, competitiveness, educational services market, international trade, Colombia, Mexico.

Main Article Content

Enohemit Olivero-Vega
Universidad Simón Bolívar Barranquilla, Colombia.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3146-4620
Yolanda Vega-Sampayo
Universidad Simón Bolívar Barranquilla, Colombia.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4622-7257
Carlos F. Miranda-Medina
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, México.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7926-4321
Carlos Manuel Acosta Villa
Universidad Simón Bolívar. Barranquilla, Colombia.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8666-7049

Abstract

In the context of the ongoing marketization of Latin American higher education, this study critically examines how knowledge management, through leadership and teamwork, affects institutional performance and service quality in HEIs in Colombia and Mexico. Adopting a cross-sectional quantitative approach as a diagnostic starting point —while acknowledging its limitations in capturing student voices and resistance to educational commodification— a 27-item Likert-scale questionnaire was administered to 570 students from four public and private HEIs; after data cleaning, 360 cases were analyzed using PLS-SEM structural equation modeling with SPSS and SmartPLS. The results confirm that leadership (β = 0.342) and teamwork (β = 0.494) positively predict institutional high performance (Y1); four of the five hypotheses were supported. The direct effect of teamwork on service surprise and recovery (Y2) was not significant (β = 0.018), suggesting mediation by more complex organizational factors. It is concluded that, while knowledge management strengthens relevant institutional capacities, its transformative potential in the Latin American context requires moving beyond competitive logic to incorporate dimensions of educational justice, student participation, and critical knowledge production.

Article Details

Issue

No. 28 (septiembre-diciembre) (2026): Redimensionar la discusión por lo público. El rol de lo político frente al pragmatismo.

Section

Investigación
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Knowledge management and competitiveness in the educational market: binational evidence from colombia and mexico. (2026). Encuentros. Revista De Ciencias Humanas, Teoría Social Y Pensamiento Crítico, 28 (septiembre-diciembre), 391-407. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21895692

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