Impact of Economic and Financial Crisis on Human Resource Function in Four Eastern- European Countries in Light of an Empirical Research in 2009

When the crisis broke out in October 2008, the four countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia) examined were in different situations, and, consequently, the governments of these countries reacted at different times. They did so, however, in very similar ways. Nevertheless, it is particularly important to know how their companies reacted to the crisis, and our study aims to find out what actions companies from these selected countries plan to take concerning the field of Human Resource Management (HRM) in the present financial and economic crisis. With a brief review of the literature, we demonstrate the role of HR in a period of depression, and then we present the findings of our empirical research, which was conducted from November 2008 to February 2009.