Peculiarities of Human Resources Management in a Service Enterprise

Abstract

Theoretical summaries as well as practical evidence validate an opinion that an effective human resources management (HRM) has a positive influence on results of an enterprise activity and plays a crucial role in a competitive advantage development process. This is especially vital for the activity of service sector enterprises because in this case, activities of employees in the service provision process often become a measure for an evaluation of service quality or even the whole enterprise activity perceived by customers. Based on this reasoning, the purpose of this article is to make a theoretical-level examination and summarize the peculiarities of HRM in service sector enterprises. Revealing the diversity of scientific approaches representing the field of HRM, it is underlined that, in the context of marketing studies, this is a question that is not less important and not less needed for the examination than it is in the view of the general theory of HRM. Moreover, a review of former theoretical studies shows that marketing theorists view the HRM in a slightly different aspect – they usually emphasize an impact of the human factor on the intangible enterprise and service value perceived by a customer. Therefore, it is concluded that it is important in a service enterprise not just to create strategically and tactical objectives related to the HRM, but also it is inevitable to define the content of the HRM function, i.e., to identify its constituents. Though all scientists of the field of HRM emphasize the importance of contact employees for the results of the service enterprise activity, it must be noted that actually there are no theoretical studies providing a construct for the evaluation of “quality” of human resources required for the provision of particular services, and what work environment has to be created, taking into account specifics of services provided. Due to these problematic aspects of HRM, most attention in this article is paid to the analysis of constituents of the HRM function, namely, competence and its development, collaboration encouragement and empowerment of employees. Emphasizing the necessity of an integrated approach to these constituents, a theoretical model for the examination of an enterprise’s HRM function is provided.