Few things are relatively understood concerning the needs and practices of small companies –
related to HR. In particular, the impact of human resources practices upon the small companies
has not been studied so much. This field of interest is a sort of „terra incognita”9 . Since it was
noticed that for big companies the HRM impact upon the performance is a positive one a much
higher number of authors have underlined the need for similar researches for SME. The existent
researches focus upon the managers’ perception on the importance and/or the success of HR
practices10. The main conclusions suggest that the enterprisers /managers acknowledge the
necessity of HR practices for reaching the objectives. However, translating the theory into
practice can cause many problems. Many authors have studied the connection between HRM
and performance empirically.
with 40-5000 employees. He studies the impact of training upon the series production and the
added value and he displays a model in which training is measured according to the training
volume per employee (the time spent for the program preparing and management) and to the
size of the company. His results confirm the presence of the moderation effect (mediation) of
the training effect per employee but it is not correlated with the size of the company: the small
companies tend to ensure a more reduced training volume as compared to the big companies,
which reduces the impact upon the production and the added value. Even if the training may
have a positive effect upon performances, for smaller companies this effect can not be enough in
order to cover the training costs