Human resource management in SMEs: a systematic review

While human capital remains the most important strategic asset for ensuring business competitiveness and sustainability, what do we know about human resource management in SMEs? This paper presents a literature review on human resource management (HRM) in SMEs. The 167 empirical articles found by searching the ABI/Inform and Repere databases are classified according to the nature of the knowledge they generated. These articles are then sorted into Jive categories according to whether they relate to (I) HR practices used in SMEs, (2) their distinctive characteristics compared to large enterprises, (3) the determinants of the adoption of HR practices, 4) their impact on the performance of SMEs, and (5) the processes through which HR practices are modified. The results show that the main focus of the studies was to verify whether large enterprises HRM model applies to SMEs. The formalization of HR practices has also attracted attention. In general, few studies have been done on the various aspects of HRM and their results are conflicting. Several research directions are proposed.