Transformations  in
Business & Economics

THE INFLUENCE OF CSR ON SIGNIFICANT FACTORS OF SMES HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN V4 COUNTRIES³
Jaroslav Belas, Lubos Smrcka, Lubomir Palcak, Khurram Ajaz Khan

ABSTRACT: The article aims to present important attributes of human resource management in the context of CSR and quantify the differences in the attitudes of SMEs depending on the implementation of the CSR concept in the SME segment of the Visegrad Four countries (V4: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary). The fulfilment of the research objective was supported by empirical research conducted in June 2022 in the segment of SMEs in the V4 countries. In this research, the attitudes of SMEs in the field of human resource were investigated in the context of the application of the CSR concept. The data collection was carried out by a renowned external company MNFORCE using "Computer Assisted Web Interviewing" (CAWI Research Method) according to the questionnaire created by the research team. The MNFORCE agency ensured an adequate structure of the respondents in terms of their size and the representativeness of the research in terms of the number of respondents. The selection of respondents was carried out using the method of random selection from the agency's professional database. The research was conducted on a sample of 1,398 respondents who were owners or top managers in the company. Respondents were divided into two groups in each V4 country. In the first group, there were SMEs which answered the statement: When managing the company, I consider the concept of CSR positively (Group A), and in the second group, there were SMEs who answered this statement negatively (Group B). The research results confirmed that Group A has a significantly better approach to Human Resources Management (HRM). This group better evaluates the importance of human capital for the company, perceives the need for HRM within the corporate management system more intensively, regularly evaluates performance and better motivates them to innovate, applies a participative management style to a higher degree and devotes a lot of its time to HRM.

KEYWORDS:  small and medium enterprises; CSR; human resources; personnel management; management style; V4 countries.

JEL classification:  L26, M12, O15.

³Acknowledgments:  The research was supported by the Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Sport of the Slovak Republic and the Slovak Academy Sciences (VEGA), project No 1/0364/22: Research on eco-innovation potential of SMEs in the context of sustainable development. The paper is an output of the project NFP313011BWN6 "The implementation framework and business model of the Internet of Things, Industry 4.0 and smart transport”.