COMPETITIVENESS OF SLOVAK ENTERPRISES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN REGION

The position of Slovakia in the region of Central and Eastern Europe is analysed in this paper. In examining this, we build on the axiom of the dominant position of multinational companies, which are an important part of international business, international economy and trade. They affect global competitiveness on international markets, including the quality of life of people. The paper explains how globalization contributes to increasing Slovakia’s competitiveness in CEE, how human resources management practices support successful companies located in the TOP 500 CEE ranking and what the management system prevails. We rely on the theoretical knowledge of wellknown experts in human resources management in the international environment, confronting their theoretical knowledge with our own research conducted by structured interviews with human resources managers of selected companies in Slovakia placed in the TOP 500 CEE ranking. The purpose of these efforts is to both theoretically and practically support the importance of human resources management in achieving positive business results on an international scale. By applying mathematical-statistical methods, we have found that there is a statistically significant difference between enterprises in which different approaches are applied in relation to the application of convergence or divergence. We have found strong dependence, confirming the assumption that the convergence or divergence is the result of the company’s approach to HRM activities. To verify the assumption of the difference in performance of HRM processes in MNCs and local enterprises, we used additional tests. The results confirmed the presumption that the performance of HRM processes in MNCs and local enterprises is different in more than half of the processes.