The effects of market economy type on the training practice differences in the Central Eastern European region

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this research is to investigate and detect determinants of the training practice and conspicuous differences in the sample of nine Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania). The study was conducted with three distinct objectives: the investigation of the training and development (T&D) practices in the CEE region, the investigation of the determinants of T&D practices in the CEE region and the measurement of the differences between the economies in the sample of CEE countries regarding their T&D practices.

Design/methodology/approach

The research is based on the Cranet research network results from 2015 to 2016. The data for the CEE countries were selected in order to investigate the determinants of T&D practice, and the differences between these economies. The nine CEE countries were divided into two groups, on the basis on the variety of capitalism (VoC approach), in order to investigate its effects on the T&D practices. T-test, chi-square test, Spearman correlation tests and hierarchical moderated regression model were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings

There are statistically significant differences between the organizations from coordinated market economy (CME) countries and liberal market economy (LME) countries in the case of the percentage of GDP of the country spent on education, the percentage of annual payroll costs of the organizations spent on training, the percentage of annual staff turnover, the implementation of the systematic evaluation of training needs, the training effectiveness, the existence of T&D strategy and the primary responsibility for major policy decisions on T&D. The results of the regression model showed that the majority of national and organizational level factors have a statistically significant relationship with the percentage of the annual payroll costs of the organization spent on training. Variety of capitalism moderates the relationship between independent variables and the dependent variable, too.

Research limitations/implications

In the presented model, the authors excluded from their investigation the effects of MNCs. It must further be stated that only the data from the latest Cranet research round were used, thus it was not possible to investigate the development of the training practice in CEE over a longer time period. These limitations could be used as possible directions for further research in the relevant area of HRM in the CEE region.

Originality/value

Since there is relatively little empirical research in the relation between capitalism type and T&D practice, especially in the region of CEE, the present paper lends new insight into this issue as well as into comparative HRM. It is hoped that this work can be taken as a starting point for further research.

Citation

Berber, N., Slavic, A., Strugar Jelača, M. and Bjekić, R. (2020), "The effects of market economy type on the training practice differences in the Central Eastern European region", Employee Relations, Vol. 42 No. 4, pp. 971-998. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-10-2018-0265