Human resource management (HRM) has become for SMEs a critical factor of adaptation to an increasingly complex and uncertain business environment. Founded on open systems and contingency theory, the present study seeks to identify configurations of HR systems in manufacturing SMEs, and to...

Personnel economics is a rather young academic (sub-)discipline that applies (micro) economic methodology and insights to the personnel function of companies. It is scientifically fertile and complementary to other disciplinary approaches to personnel issues. Instead of that, an approach without...

A political economy approach to explaining the existence of different human resource strategies is developed in this article – in short: a political personnel economy. The starting point is a critical analysis of the abstinence of politics and power and the resulting explanation deficiencies...

In this article, we compare the effects of ‘high performance human resource management’ (HPHR) on employee and company performance between Ireland and the Netherlands. Key hypotheses are, first, that companies using the HPHR system exhibit higher levels of employee and company performance...

This paper offers Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a framework for understanding and evaluating Human Resource Development activities in larger organizations, specifically transnational corporations (TNCs). There is a growing literature on international human resource management targeted...

This paper is concerned with people management practices in companies in Malaysia. It examines the development of the main practice areas of the management of human resources (HR), the HR management (HRM) function and to what extent locallyowned companies (LOC) are influenced by multinational...

Tight labour markets and changing employment relationships make employees with high levels of firm-specific knowledge, skills, and abilities less dependent on and committed to their employer. Companies need to work harder in order to attract and retain employees and protect their mutual human...