Small entrepreneurial ventures culture, change and the impact on HRM: A critical review

Effective management of people is increasingly recognized in the literature as a vital contributor to organizational performance and indeed survival. Nevertheless, studies of the dynamics of human resource management in small entrepreneurial ventures are relatively sparse. In this paper we draw upon a range of behaviourally-informed research publications to demonstrate that a culture of owner-influenced individualism and informality pervades these ventures, affecting prime human resource issues such as performance related practices, training and development, work–life balance and other critical dimensions of employee welfare. A preference for informality and an absence of strategy to inform owner–employee relations sits uneasily alongside growing political pressures toward codification of the management of employees in small entrepreneurial ventures. The response to these pressures may have significant implications both for relationships with employees and for organizational performance.