Window on Eastern Europe: A Moral Movement for Polish Business

Our regular contributor on the business ethics scene in Poland reports on recent encouraging developments and sees them as contributing to the 'moral revolution' in addition to the political and economic ones which a leading Polish academic judges his country needs today. The author is Professor of Management at DePaul University Department of Management, 1 East Jackson Blvd, Chicago IL 60604, and Visiting Fulbright Professor of Management at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan.     

Window on Eastern Europe: Business and National Culture in Estonia

As the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe try to make capitalism work in an ethical manner, their historical background and the national culture acquired over centuries cannot be ignored, as this study from Estonia eloquently shows. Dr Professor Maksim Saat is Professor of Business Administration, and Dr Mari Meel is Assistant Professor of Business Ethics, at the Tallinn Technical University, Ehitajate tee 5, EE-0026 Tallinn, Estonia. In an Appendix Dr Meel describes how she teaches business ethics to university students.     

Window on Eastern Europe: Teaching Ethics in Gdańsk

Against the background of a new Ten Commandments for the Polish business community a new course in business ethics is now being offered to students in the Faculty of Management and Economy of the Technical University of Gdańsk, ul. G. Narutowicza 11/12, 80-952 Gdańsk, Poland. Dr Kinach-Brzozowska, who introduced the course last year, describes its content and her students'needs and reactions.     

Window on Eastern Europe: Current Issues in Business Ethics in the Czech Republic

Our Associate Editor, who is head of the Center for Ethics in Economics and Business, CERGE-EI, in Prague, writes of a macabre case of brand copying as one illustration of the difficulties of achieving fair competition in the CR.     

Eastern and Central Europe

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to help explain the impact of cultural variables on privatization and market entry strategies in several of the transition economies of Central Europe. The geographic area focus is on the former East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The cultural legacy of communism involves the need to fundamentally change core values. Democratic capitalism requires a cultural re-orientation. The authors seek to examine the implications of cultural impediments and opportunities and to show how successful strategic management seeks to function in a dramatic value transition. Finally, the analysis underlines how each country as well as individual management teams have made progress under the new circumstances.     

Strategic partnering in Eastern Europe

There are alternatives to the much-touted “joint venture” in Eastern Europe. Some of these, such as licensing and cooperation agreements, have actually been available for some time. Others, like wholly owned subsidiaries, mergers, and acquisitions, are in the early stages of development. Clearly, the pace of reform indicates it is time to rethink the conventional wisdom on corporate development in Eastern Europe.     

Promoting entrepreneurship in Eastern Europe

The past decade has seen a revival of entrepreneurship in the modern industrial economies, characterized by a wave of enterprise restructuring and of new developments in business and technology. In this paper, we argue that market transitions of the post-socialist economies of Eastern Europe cannot be successful without similar entrepreneurial restructuring. To address the massive structural distortions that still plague the post-reform economies, the governments of the region must promote entrepreneurship through policies that: (1) make use of all possible sources of entrepreneurship, including in particular the former state and social sectors; and (2) establish a macroeconomic environment and property-rights framework conducive to entrepreneurship. A successful promotion strategy will need to operate on several fronts, by: (1) redirecting entrepreneurial activities into legal, productive activities, (2) increasing the supply and effectiveness of entrepreneurs, (3) developing markets for complementary inputs, and (4) increasing the demand for entrepreneurship. An unsuccessful approach, we argue, will be one that regards the pre-reform small private sector as the only source of entrepreneurship, and as the only arena for its productive use.Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers Professor of Economics and Business Administration University of California at Berkeley (on leave)Visiting Professor University of California at Berkeley Professor of Economics and Entrepreneurship Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana (on leave) Advisor to the Government of Slovenia on real sector restructuring, 1992–93     

Strategic trade policy for Eastern Europe

The integration of the former state-trading countries into international free trade may, on the one hand, sensibly complement the reforms now under way towards their becoming market economies; on the other hand, this move harbours the risk of perpetuating and indeed aggravating the economic backwardness of those countries. The detrimental effects can be avoided if a product-cycle-oriented economic policy is pursued which makes a deliberate point of utilizing the relatively rich endowment of human capital available in these countries.     

Regionalization in Central and Eastern Europe

SUMMARY

Regional players among the MNCs operating in Central and Eastern Europe have to decide if they should regard their businesses as a collection of individual markets or as a homogeneous region. The purpose of this paper is to examine if and how regionalization concepts have actually been implemented by foreign MNCs in CEE. The analysis focuses on the preconditions for the emergence of a regional strategy, on the identification of the main areas of regional integration, and the relationship between strategy and organizational structure. By using a longitudinal case study approach a better insight is gained on how regional strategies have emerged during the internationalization process of the firm and, if they have emerged, in which way they have manifested themselves in business decisions. The findings raise new questions about the regionalization construct with regard to the operationalization of regionalization, the relationship between strategy and structure, and its applicability to services.