부산대학교 도서관

Seventy-three percent of U.S. business leaders identified that good human resource practices, such as acquiring, developing, and retaining employees, are essential to the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations. Based on the people capability maturity model (P-CMM) and transformational leadership theory, this qualitative multiple case study purpose explored successful strategies that leaders of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) used to acquire, develop, and retain employees. The case population was comprised of five SMB leaders in the Cayman Islands who successfully used talent management strategies to acquire, develop, and retain employees for more than 5 years, as well as four employees who had worked with the SMBs for more than 5 years. The selected leaders participated in face-toface semistructured interviews, while the employees participated in a focus group. The data analysis process followed Yin's five-phase analysis cycle; it entailed an analysis of interview responses from individual interviews, the focus group interview, and a review of related documents. Four themes emerged from the data analysis: conducting management assessments, following recruitment and selection guidelines, empowering and enabling employees, and fostering workplace loyalty. A recommendation is that SMB leaders prepare training manuals from their successful procedures to be used internally and for benchmarking with other SMBs. The study's findings could contribute to positive social change by enabling leaders to improve employee development and retention for more productive employees and higher revenues to benefit society through employees becoming mentors and volunteers in local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]