Multinationals and Transition: Business Strategies, Technology and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe

0.0

The book argues that the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in economic transition should involve participation in initial industrial restructuring and then in the subsequent, more orderly, advance of sustainable development. It emphasizes that MNEs can remain participants in such processes of change because of the diversity of their strategic aims and their willingness to adapt their operations in a particular host country. Thus, beyond targeting local markets and/or developing new supply bases in transition economies, MNEs can also move towards locating dynamic creative operations there. This can reflect strong, commercially underrealized technological and research heritages and capacities in European transition economies. MNEs, it is argued, can help these economies to enter international markets as much on the basis of product and technological originality as on the basis of low input costs. The book carefully conceptualizes these themes and investigates them through two new survey-based data sets on MNEs' strategic and technological activity in Central and Eastern Europe.