THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN PORTUGAL: THE CASE OF RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION

The enormous business competitiveness at global scale and the constant search for sources of competitive advantages makes companies think about the potential of human resources management (HRM). Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) must be aware of this reality. To subsist in a more and more competitive market, enterprises need to obtain sustainable competitive advantages.
HRM has gained visibility within SMEs. There is a change of mentality within business sector and the proof is in increasing use of recruitment and selection, investment in training and development, and more relevance in the evaluation of employee performance. But, despite these changes, is there HRM in SMEs? This study seeks to focus on the idiosyncrasies of small organizations and tries to understand if there are HRM practices in SMEs, particularly the recruitment and selection, and enables a competitive advantage. More, it aims to understand the level of implementation of human resources practices.
In empirically terms this research is centered on the best 1000 SMEs in Portugal. In what concerns the method we implemented a questionnaire addressed to the enterprises managers and utterly analysed with the programme “Statistical Package for Social Sciences”.
This paper intends, somehow, deepen issues of HRM in SMEs, largely unexplored until now, particularly the relationship between HRM and business strategy, the level of formalization of HRM practices in SMEs and the influence of the size of the organization to HRM development in order to improve knowledge and enabling SMEs to bigger and better response to the global market.
Although we can’t generalize it to the national background, this study allows us to conclude that recruitment and selection practices are commonly used in small and medium enterprises. The research data prove it. Planning recruitment is a critical step for the companies. Moreover, human resources are not seen as a strategic factor for the organization. SMEs only apply some human resources parceled and reactive practices, without any strategic integration.