Abstract

Although human capital has been widely recognized as a valuable asset that helps firms to develop core competences to achieve competitive advantage, little is known about how HR (human resource) practices enhance employee capabilities in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Building upon the resource-based view of HRM (human resources management) and the proactivity literature, we explore the effects of the HR system as an integration of bundles of HR practices on employee capability and how employee proactivity helps explain this relationship in the SME context. Using survey data collected from 213 employees working in service SMEs in New Zealand, we applied partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to test our hypothesis. The results show that the HR system in SMEs facilitates employee proactivity with this, in turn, enhancing employee job capability. Our findings suggest that the HR system, as a source of human capital, is important for SMEs to exploit. Specifically, our findings validate the notion that the HR system is beneficial to employee capability through facilitating a proactivity mechanism in the SME context. These findings yield both theoretical and managerial implications, which are discussed.

摘要

尽管人力资本已被广泛认为是帮助企业发展核心能力以实现竞争优势的宝贵资产，但人们对人力资源（人力资源）实践如何提高中小型企业（SME）的员工能力知之甚少。基于基于资源的人力资源管理（人力资源管理）观点和主动性文献，我们探讨了人力资源系统作为一系列人力资源实践对员工能力的整合的影响，以及员工的主动性如何帮助解释中小企业背景下的这种关系. 使用从在新西兰服务型中小企业工作的 213 名员工收集的调查数据，我们应用偏最小二乘结构方程模型 (PLS-SEM) 来检验我们的假设。结果表明，中小企业的人力资源系统促进了员工的积极性，反过来，提升员工工作能力。我们的研究结果表明，人力资源系统作为人力资本的来源，对于中小企业来说非常重要。具体而言，我们的研究结果验证了人力资源系统通过促进中小企业环境中的主动机制来提高员工能力的概念。这些发现产生了理论和管理方面的影响，我们对此进行了讨论。