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Bleak house or bright prospect? Human resource management in Australian SMEs
Author(s) -
Wiesner Retha,
McDonald Jim
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
asia pacific journal of human resources
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.825
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1744-7941
pISSN - 1038-4111
DOI - 10.1177/103841110103900203
Subject(s) - human resource management , business , human resources , resource (disambiguation) , strategic human resource planning , representation (politics) , industrial relations , marketing , plan (archaeology) , management , strategic planning , public relations , economics , political science , politics , geography , computer network , archaeology , computer science , law
This study fills the gaps in existing research on HRM in Australian SMEs by considering a wide range of standard human resource (HR) practices and some industrial relations practices. The small business sector has been regarded as the natural home for ‘bleak house’ human resource management practices typified by low uptake of human resource practices, little or no collective representation of employees and little or no employee participation. The results, reporting a national study (n = 1435) on human resource management practices in Australian SMEs, reveal a moderate take‐up of human resource management practices. These findings by themselves do not support what Storey has called the ‘bleak house’ scenario in Australian SMEs. However, there are factors that may have a negative impact on the relative positive picture portrayed in this study, when the impact of organisational size, the presence of a HR manager and prevalence of a strategic plan on the uptake of HR practices in SMEs are considered, together with low unionisation, low employee participation and a low incidence of collective practices.