Impact of HRD practices on business performance: An empirical analysis of manufacturing SMEs in Japan

Abstract

There is a growing body of evidence supporting the relationship between Human Resource Development (HRD) practices and perceived benefits in organizations. However, most of these studies have been limited only to large enterprises and carried out in western societies. Although some studies have tried to rectify this situation, serious inadequacies in theses studies have questioned the validity of their findings. To rectify this situation, an attempt was made to examine the impact of HRD practices on business performance having taken a sample of manufacturing SMEs in Japan. Amail survey was developed and distributed to owne r(s)/manager(s) in manufacturing SMEs in Aichi Prefecture in Japan. An electronic data file maintained by the Nagoya Chamber of Commerce was used to draw the sample. Three hundred twenty-six (326) questionnaires were distributed to a randomly selected sample of manufacturing SMEs in Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture. One hundred five (105), equivalents to thirty two percent (32%), positively responded to the survey. The owner(s)/manager(s) was (were) asked the level of adaptation of eight (8) HRD related practices, employed during the past three years. In relation to these practices they were asked to reveal their perception about the operational and financial performance during the same period. The results of the analysis indicate that there exists a strong relationship between HRD practices and operational performance. Specifically, workforce training and development have led to the increased skills, attitudes and motivation of employees in manufacturing SMEs in Japan. On the other hand, these increased HRD outcomes have been translated into the increased financial performance. Besides this indirect relationship, it was found a positive direct relationship between HRD interventions and financial performance in Japanese manufacturing SMEs.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.