Abstract

Human resource management (HRM) in contemporary economics is linked to the company’s success measured through numerous organizational measures (profitability, productivity, rate of innovation, market share, environmental performances, etc.). The role of HRM in large enterprises is relatively known, especially when the competitiveness and sustainable development are in question, since the most of the authors tried to investigate strategic role of HRM in large companies all around the world. On the other hand, small entrepreneurial and medium sized (SME) companies have not been studied in relation to the HRM in great advance in the past. Although there is a lack of the literature and empirical researches in this area, several studies in the past decade and recent years emphasized the importance of the HRM for the survival and success of the SMEs. The reason why today more and more authors are arguing about the success of the SMEs is the perceived advantages of SMEs in turbulent and unpredictable business environment. SMEs are seen as driving force for the vulnerable economies, a source of innovations and employment, flexible and able to quickly react to the changes. Bearing in minds the SMEs and their advantages, authors focused attention to the economies in the Central and Eastern Europe countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Hungary and Bulgaria), where the SMEs are recognized as the possibilities for the economic recovery and development. Since human capital is recognized as one of the most important factors of the enterprise’ success, the aim of this work was to present the role of HRM in SMEs in the economies of Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovenia, to determine the type of linkage between HRM and the success of small and medium-sized companies that operate in the CEE region, in light of the Cranet 2008/10 survey data. The paper objectives were the exploration of the existence of organizations’ business strategy and HR strategy in SMEs, as well as the existence of HR department and the role of HRM in the business of the SMEs. Special tasks in this research were to explore the HRM activities and trends (recruitment, selection, compensations, performance management, training and development, human resource information system, etc.) that are present in the SMEs in the CEE region. Also, it has been presented the ranking of the SMEs’ performances and the correlation between the existence of HRM and the several performance measures in these companies. Descriptive statistical methods, t-test of independent samples and ANOVA test have been used during quantitative analysis to explore the presented relations.