Title: People management for sustainable SMEs

Authors: Sooksan Kantabutra

Addresses: Center for Research on Sustainable Leadership, College of Management, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand

Abstract: The study identifies people management practices among sustainable SMEs that adopt the Thai philosophy of sufficiency economy. The study adopts multi-data collection methods. 'Grounded theory' is adopted as the approach for data analysis. Emerging people management practices are: 1) identifying core competencies consistent to Thai values; 2) being genuinely concerned for employees; 3) offering life skills training for employees; 4) providing opportunities for employees to suggest ideas and encourage them to take part in decision makings; 5) growing own managers; 6) encouraging employees to contribute to the society and environment. This paper is among the first that explore the relationships between people management practices and corporate sustainability in Thai SMEs and propose theoretical assertions between them for future theory building.

Keywords: sufficiency economy; sustainable people management; corporate sustainability; Thailand.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2019.103688

International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 2019 Vol.28 No.4, pp.438 - 456

Received: 18 Jul 2018
Accepted: 14 Oct 2018
Published online: 22 Nov 2019 *

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