Many Western firms are rapidly investing in, or forming joint ventures with, firms in Eastern European countries. Despite the growth in Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) in Eastern Europe, Western managers know relatively little about the Human Resource Management (HRM) practices of these countries. In this paper HRM practices are discussed in Eastern European states, such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Russia. Although there are both historical and cultural differences between these countries, these countries will be dealt with together, as they all have numerous elements in common that enable managers or researchers to see them as a whole.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze if an Eastern European HRM model can be constructed on the basis of an analysis of Eastern Europe on several areas. First, th

· Beardwell, I. & Holden, L; Human Resource Management: A contemporary perspective, Pitman publishing, 1994

As mentioned before, the dominant political system in Eastern Europe was communism. This implied that a lot of the large companies were state-owned and the government heavily influenced trade unions. The view projected to the outside world by communist governments, was that of in a worker's state, such as the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, the interest of the workers were as one with the government, because the government was controlled by a dictatorship of the proletariat. The problem with such a unitarist system is that it allows for little realistic criticism that might afford changes and reforms to meet real challenges. In theory trade unions were a separate entity from the Communist Party, but in reality they were often controlled by Party members. This meant that under communism, unemployment was unknown due to manipulation with statistical data and hidden unemployment (a certain job is being done by more people than necessary, just in order to provide more people with a job).

· Kiriazov, D; Sullivan, S. E; Human Resource Management in Eastern Europe, Bowling Green State University, 1999

· http://www.kornferry.com/hr_eur.htm

Some common words found in the essay are:
Eastern European, Eastern Europe, European HR, Japan Strikingly, Communist Party, Russia Rumania, Eastern Europe's, Campbell Laurent, Resource Management, European Gross, eastern european, eastern europe, european countries, eastern european countries, hr practices, human resource, european hr practices, resource management, management practices, european hr, eastern european hr, human resource management, educational system, hrm model, eastern european hrm,
Approximate Word count = 3662
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)