Purpose:

To determine the psychometric and discriminant properties of the leadership scale in micro, small and medium enterprises of the bakery and tortilla shop economic branch in order to contribute to the identification of their dissolution and permanence factors in Hermosillo, Sonora.

Methodology:

Through a non-experimental design of a correlational descriptive type and a stratified random sample of 180 participants from the study population, an exploratory factor analysis with Oblimin rotation, a multiple discriminating analysis and hypothesis testing was performed.

Results:

A multidimensional structure for the leadership construct was corroborated with reliability and discriminatory validity. The analysis showed equality of covariance matrices between groups, with high significance and differences between tortilla shop and bakery populations.

Limitations:

Results show validity and reliability for the specific economic branch of the food industry. However, these may be different in other populations or economic sectors.

Findings:

This research contributes a valid and reliable scale of leadership for SMEs and a typology of these populations in the food industry.