Abstract:
An important question that has emerged in analyses of CEE HRM is the extent to
which ‘Western’ theories and ‘best practices’ can be applied to the region, or whether
there is evidence of a unique or hybrid approach to HRM emerging. This is a question
that deserves attention, given the potential significance of many of these economies. In
attempting to explore it and landscape developments in HRM in CEE, scholars do not
have easy access to a mapping of existing research. In this chapter, we seek to provide
such a mapping and identify under-researched issues for future investigation. We reviewed
(mainly) empirical studies examining HRM in CEE and FSU countries. We conducted
article title, abstract, and introduction searches in the most influential international HRM
journals (Caligiuri, 1999; Hoobler & Brown Johnson, 2004). We supplemented this search
with additional journals in situations where the focus of the research was on specific
practices neglected in previous research (for example, outsourcing in Smith et al., 2006),
where the research offered a focus on a country not well covered heretofore (for example,
Serbia in Milikić et al., 2008; Romania in Dalton & Druker, 2012), or where the research
offered the possibility of particular insight because of the unique research methods
employed (e.g., Gurkov, 2002). We organise the results of our search around whether the
studies examined build knowledge underscored by the basic nomothetic assumptions of
the universalistic approach, or provide more idiographic, contextual knowledge linked
with institutional idiosyncrasies.
