Self-Managing Teams in Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are looking for a sustainable and profitable business concept. They use a human resource model according to the situation and establish a democratic system with flexible work, focusing on responsibility and initiative and increasing the self-control of the team´s members. Self-managing teams have been used more and more in recent years in the business environment. They are relatively autonomous work groups whose members share responsibility and leadership to accomplish their independent tasks. Their objective is to develop a type of collective knowledge that requires the pooling of individual knowledge. Their characteristics include independent, autonomous decision making, shared responsibility, and shared leadership. Sometimes, self-managing teams are also responsible for personnel decisions within the team, such as working hours, the selection and contracting of members, dismissal, and even determining salaries. In sum, the authors propose self-managing teams (such as High Performance Practices) as a good human resource management in small and medium enterprises and show how they can help to create organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage in SMEs.

The Impact of the Entrepreneur’s Educational Level on the Employment Creation by New Small and Medium Enterprises

This chapter examines the effects of different types of start-up rates on subsequent employment change. Longitudinal data on start-ups and employment in Portuguese regions in the period 1996–2007 is used for the analysis. The study addresses whether diverse types of new small- and medium-sized enterprise formation have heterogeneous effects on regional employment generation. It is found that, for the range considered, the seven types of start-ups led to significant and negative effects on the average variation of regional employment. It is also observed that these effects were more negative for start-ups with at least one business owner with higher education in engineering and for start-ups with at least one business owner with higher education in management. The last conclusion is that the share of highly skilled employees has a statistically significant and positive impact on the average employment change and, therefore, on regional development.

Managing Human Resources in Family Businesses

Although a lot of research has been carried out in the field of family businesses in recent years, not much of it has focused on human resource management. After compiling the major studies, both negative aspects (e.g. nepotism) and positive ones (e.g. employee commitment) have been identified. Therefore, the authors propose high-performance human resources practices to reduce the negative impact of family in business and boost the positive effects, increase their human capital, and achieve a competitive advantage in this field. Finally, the authors provide key insights for practitioners, family business owners, and managers, and they propose future research directions.

Decision Making in SMEs

This chapter explores theories and concepts of ethical decision making in SMEs and how individuality of entrepreneurs affects their organisations. In order to investigate the entrepreneurial ethical decision-making process, the chapter crossbreeds the concepts of greed and power, cognitive moral development, ethical ideologies, and individual psychological characteristics as determinant of ethical decision making. Through discussion of relevant models, the chapter presents arguments on determinants of individual ethical decision making as well as external factors that influence the decision-making process. In doing so, it aims to provide a distinctive perspective on understanding decision making in SMEs through forming a bridge between individual moral psychology and entrepreneurial decision making. This understanding enables us to have an alternative reasoning when examining employment-related issues.

How SMEs in the Car Maintenance Services Industry Recruit Employees from the Dense Forest of Hopeless Unemployed Youths

There is a general consensus among scholars that the HR practices by corporate companies cannot be imitated by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Even though it is a neglected sector, SMEs in Tanzania are considered to be a major contributor to the national economy in terms of tax payment and job creation. Using a case study, this chapter investigates human resource practices in the recruitment process among the SMEs in a car maintenance sub sector. The nature of doing business is more informal, whereby a customer can bring a car to the garage and the technicians work on the car without bargaining for the cost of the work. Accordingly, there have usually been complaints from customers regarding over charging for the services offered and lack of trust among technicians, especially on matters relating to falsification on spare parts. In addressing this problem, garage owners have to make sure that they employ people with good character; those who cannot temper with customers’ property tarnish the image and reputation of the company.

Intergenerational Transition in a Small Family Business

Family businesses constitute the key infrastructure of wealth creation across the globe. One of the most important human-resource challenges they face is intergenerational transition, an issue that has received considerable attention from scholars in various countries. Despite this great interest, academics are still attempting to understand the phenomenon and provide effective managerial guidance on how family businesses can make it to the second generation. This chapter seeks to contribute to family business research by offering a more nuanced understanding of intergenerational transition that builds on a conceptualization of the phenomenon as a process rather than the prevailing view of it as an instantaneous event. In order to capture the processual nature of intergenerational transition, evidence is presented from a field study carried out in a small Italian family business that was the arena of three different intergenerational transitions taking place at different time periods. The evidence gathered suggests that the process is shaped by interaction of the different parties involved, who renegotiate their roles as it unfolds, with various factors playing a part.

HRM Practices and Problems in Family-Owned SMEs

In exchange for the need for more highly trained employees, there is not enough qualified labor in the market. Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in the economies of countries because of their characteristics about generating employment. Effective Human Resource Management (HRM) is becoming increasingly important in the modern knowledge-based economy and vital for the success of small- and medium-sized enterprises. However, there are few studies concerning HRM practices of SMEs. The purpose of this study is to analyze the current HRM practices of SMEs, especially which are family businesses, and to identify HRM practices and the problems within these SMEs. With the help of the literature review, helpful suggestions about HRM practices are developed for SMEs.

The Rise, Decline, and Regeneration of Industrial Districts

Who does what, and how, is central to Human Resource Management (HRM). Where people do it has been central to theories of location and the clustering of firms in industrial districts. Yet there has been little synergy boundary spanning between HRM and location theories. This chapter seeks to redress this in relation to the rise and decline of industrial districts of small and medium firms and to draw implications for their potential regeneration. It relates this to cost-based models of locational and competitive advantage, theories of flexible specialisation, the “triple helix” concept of enterprise-university-government relations, and the challenges both for entrepreneurs and for policy makers in an era in which industrial districts are no longer only local but already have “gone global.” In forwarding the concept of “enhanced HRM,” the chapter advocates that public policies for SMEs should encourage surfacing tacit knowledge in new product innovation, achieving kaizen style continuous improvement, stretching core competences, profiling and extending latent abilities and implicit skills, and boundary spanning to synergise research with new high-tech start ups. While critical both of Michael Porter’s dismissal of tacit knowledge and kaizen, and of European research and regional policies, the chapter gives examples of success in such policies and how “enhanced HRM” can draw from them to regenerate industrial districts.

Occupational Health and Safety in SMEs

Employees of Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are exposed to higher risks than the employees of larger ones, and SMEs have difficulties in controlling risk. Many countries have noticed the potential of the SMEs, and they judge employment and economic growth to a great extent based on these enterprises. The studies regarding this subject have increased during the last decade, parallel to the political and economic interests in occupational health and safety in SMEs. The objective of this chapter is to reveal general conclusions on effective approaches to prevent occupational diseases and injuries in SMEs and to gain information related to employment, welfare and health facilities, health education, legislation, occupational health, and safety management as a part of integrated management systems and other safety activities. The chapter also aims to facilitate developing an informative perspective about Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OHSMS) in SMEs by emphasizing the drivers, benefits, and barriers of SMEs trying to adopt these systems.

Entrepreneurship Readiness in Turkey

The target group of the study is composed of the entrepreneurs having business in manufacturing and services in Istanbul (Marmara Region), Kayseri (Central Anatolia Region), and Van (Eastern Anatolia Region), Turkey. Istanbul is a first degree developed city, Kayseri is a second degree developed city, and Van is a fifth degree developed city. A questionnaire having three parts was developed to collect data for the study. The first part of the questionnaire was about the factors influencing the decisions of establishment of a new business, the second part was about the personality characteristics, and the third part was about the demographic features of the entrepreneurs. One-hundred-seventy-eight questionnaires were collected from the companies in the targeted regions, and their results are analyzed statistically.