중소기업의 헌신형 인적자원관리와 조직성과

High-Commitment Human Resource Management and Performance in SMEs : The Role of Trust-in-Management and CEO’s Entrepreneurship

헌신형 인적자원관리의 기업성과에 대한 긍정적인 효과는 많은 거시적 인적자원관리 연구들에서 검증되었지만 중소기업을 대상으로 한 연구에서는 일관된 결과를 보이지 못하였고 그에 대한 이론 및 실무적 시사점 또한 제한적이었다. 본 연구는 89개의 중소기업을 대상으로 헌신형 인적자원관리와 성과와의 관계에 있어서 조직에 대한 신뢰와 CEO의 기업가정신의 매개 및 조절된 매개효과를 검증하였다. 분석자료로는 한국직업능력개발원이 개발한 인적자본기업 패널의 2007년도 자료와 한국신용 평가정보의 성과자료, 그리고 중소기업 CEO를 대상으로 한 설문자료를 활용하였다. 그 결과, 성과에 대한 매개요인으로 조직에 대한 신뢰는 성과에 대한 인적자원관리의 효과를 완전매개하며, CEO의 기업가정신은 헌신형 인적자원관리와 조직성과와의 긍정적 관계를 보다 강화하는 것으로 유의한 결과를 나타내었다. 이는 헌신형 인적자원관리가 조직에 대한 신뢰를 강화함으로써 중소기업의 생산성에 긍정적인 영향을 줄 것이라는 주장을 지지한다. CEO의 기업가정신은 일반적으로 조직에 대한 신뢰와 조직성과와의 관계를 강화하는 것으로 나타났다. 단순기울기 검증 결과 기업가정신 수준이 높을 때 조직에 대한 신뢰에 따라 조직성과가 증가하는 정도가 더 큰 것을 확인하였다. 그러나 조직에 대한 신뢰수준이 낮을 때에는 CEO의 기업가정신이 높을 때보다 낮을 때 생산성이 더 높게 나타나는 것으로 나타났다. 토론에서는 대기업과 중소기업의 인적자원관리 도입 및 실행 수준을 비교분석하여 중소기업에서의 헌신형 인적자원관리의 의의와 시사점을 제시하였다.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have limited human and physical resources than large firms and are characterized by high risk and dynamic working environments. Most employees in SMEs are in charge of critical roles for gaining and sustaining a firm competitive advantage. Thus, human resources having knowledge and technologies are a critical factor for survival and performance in SMEs. Although many previous studies on macro human resource management (HRM) have examined the effects of-HRM systems on firm performance, most of them used large firms as their samples. Some studies took SMEs as their research settings but showed at best inconsistent results in terms of the relationship between HRM and firm performance. In the case of research targeting SMEs, focusing a few policy choices is important because SMEs cannot afford to take extensive HRM practices given limited resources. In addition, more appropriate characteristics of SMEs should be taken into account in the formula when the relationship between HRM and firm performance is examined. In line with these arguments, the purpose of this study is to examine the mechanism of the relationship between high commitment (HC) HRM system and organizational performance. More specifically, this study analyzes a mediating effect of trust in management and a moderating effect of CEO’s entrepreneurship in the relationship between HRM and performance. HC HRM system is a configuration of principles, policies, and practices designed to enhance employees’ capabilities, commitment, and opportunities through which high performance can be realized. HC HRM includes such policies as employment security, selective hiring, self-managed team, extensive training and development, participation in decision-making, organizational performancebased compensation, egalitarianism, and sharing information (Pfeffer, 1998). These policies enhance employees’ commitment and trust toward organization based on the norm of reciprocity and social exchange. We defined trust as the employee’s belief in organizational leaders, which leads employees to believe that organizational actions prove to be beneficial for employees. Trust influences to form positive attitudes and behaviors of employees in the organization. In the case of CEO’s entrepreneurship, it usually contains three aspects : innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking propensity. The CEO characteristics enhance empowerment and innovative behaviors. Therefore, CEO’s entrepreneurship positively enhances the relationship between trust and organizational performance. Taking a contingency perspective, it would be interesting to see how the relationship is strengthened or weakened by a contingent factor, CEO’s entrepreneurship. Based on these arguments, we generated following hypotheses: H1 : High commitment HRM system is positively related with trust-in-management of employees. H2 : Trust-in-management is positively related with organizational performance. H3 : Trust-in-management mediates the relationship between high commitment HRM and organizational performance. H4 : The higher the level of CEO’s entrepreneurship, the stronger the positive relationship between trust-in-management and organizational performance. We used three sources of data for this study. The first source is the Human Capital Corporate Panel (HCCP) which is to measure HC HRM system and trust-in-management. Second, organizational performance was measured as the logarithm of sales per employee from KISinfo data. Finally, we collected survey data from CEOs of SMEs to measure CEO’s entrepreneurship. The sample of this study is SMEs in Korea and the sample size is 89. The results of the analyses revealed that the relationship between HC HRM system and performance was fully mediated by trust-in-management and that the relationship was moderated by CEO’s entrepreneurship.