Abstract:

This paper presents the situation of employees’ working conditions, focusing on those of the highly skilled employees (knowledge workers), as reflected in the economic press, scientific and business, of two neighbouring former communist countries: Romania and Hungary. Empirical research was a content analysis applied to six Romanian economic (academic and business) journals, including three print and three online, and two Hungarian journals, one business printed and one academic online, for the period 1 January 2009-30 June 2011. The analysis (based on content analysis grid) considers geopolitical area covered by published articles, the concrete dimension regarding the working conditions, the material type, the key terms (ideas, phrases) the most common used for each dimension separately, the usefulness of the article for the topic etc. After the case studies dedicated to each journal, including many of the summaries of the most significant articles on the working conditions of skilled employees highly in the two countries, the conclusions show that in all eight Romanian and Hungarian journals analysed, the aspects of working conditions are insufficiently approached; when approached, the focus is on the socio-economic topics relevant for the crisis such as decrease and/or stagnation of salaries, layoffs, unemployment etc.; difficulties specific to high-skilled employees’ working conditions (regarding working time, work intensity, work nature, work overload, leadership style, knowledge management, work-life balance etc.) are found only as an exception.