Comparison of Human Resource Management in Slovenian Family and Non-Family Businesses

Abstract

The room to reach a competitive advantage in today’s dynamic world, companies have in unutilized and even unknown human abilities of own employees. Treatment of people at work in large organizations is well analyzed, but little focus is directed at small and medium-sized enterprises. This is particularly true for family businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises are largely owned by individual families and are an extremely important part of developed economies. Complexity of internal relationships and interplay between the two systems: families and businesses, which often lead to conflicts in interaction, however, is the reason that many managers and professionals are not willing to work in family businesses. It is justified to set the research question; Are we obligate to treated family businesses as a special case when considering the management of people at work? This paper presents the need to address the family businesses as a special case. In a successful and long living family businesses undoubtedly are closely and carefully working with the employees. It is little known about dealing with people in a Slovenian family businesses and how management practices differ from non-family firms. Based on the study of literature and conclusions from a qualitative empirical study the differences are presented in this article. There are also presented differences in practices of dealing with people at work in foreign and Slovenian non-family and family businesses. At the end there are exposed a good practices of each type of business and recommendations for their use.