Two decades of post-socialism in Serbia : lessons learned and emerging issues in human resource management

The success and speed of transition processes in post-socialist countries produced quite different results regarding theirs institutional and economic systems. As far as Human Resources Management (HRM) practices are concerned, the main challenge for managers in these countries seem to be how to efficiently replicate HRM practices from the Western capitalistic countries, taking into account the fact that there are considerable differences in institutional, cultural and economic contexts. A few available empirical studies from Serbia revealed mixed findings suggesting that there are evident signs of both forces - the convergence and the divergence of HRM practices in Serbia compared to the Western ones. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to investigate HRM practices in Serbia, in order to shed light on some emerging issues in HRM, which may be of significance regards further studies.