Purpose – The reason often cited for the poor relationship between small businesses and their uptake of vocational education and training is that small business owner‐managers claim that they are too busy to engage in training or any type of learning activity and that most training is of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to begin the process of exploring the intersection between entrepreneurship and HRM by developing an understanding of the nature of HRM in growth‐oriented small firms. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 600 small Australian businesses,...

Purpose – A major frustration for most policy researchers in the small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) area is the virtual non‐existence of scientific data on this sector in the country. This paper aims to provide some data. Design/methodology/approach – A survey of 651 SMEs from the...

Purpose – This paper seeks to take a Gestalts perspective to analyze the alignment between the HRM practices and strategic capabilities of SMEs. Design/methodology/approach – Based on Miles and Snow's adaptive cycle, this study examines the coherence of HRM practices with the strategic...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to profile Thai small‐medium enterprises (SMEs) and fill a research gap about their investment in training and approaches to training. Design/method/approach – The paper uses a quantitative, descriptive design with a drop‐off survey among 438 SMEs...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the adoption of information technology is associated with human resource management and organizational restructuring. Design/methodology/approach – SMEs in Nova Scotia were visited and complete data from 130 firms were obtained....

The relevance and importance of the high technology small firm sector to economies has been discussed by a number of authors and new technology‐based firms (NTBFs) have been viewed as having a very important role to play in job creation and as the seedbed of emerging industries. This paper...

There is little information regarding how, or whether, small‐firm owners use their own and their management team’s skills and experiences as part of a strategic approach to achieving business goals, durability and, if desired, growth. It would appear that firms which do utilise a strategic...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors which determine the adoption of best HR practices in Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach – Regression analysis was utilized to analyse survey data obtained from 345 enterprises operating...

An inter‐disciplinary approach is adopted to provide a deeper understanding of the human resource‐service quality relationship. The paper tests the relationships organisational commitment and job satisfaction have with service quality of customer‐contact employees. Hypotheses are...