Strategy Structure And Performance In A Transition Economy

Based on the results of 177 survey responses, Tobias Weigl shows that the simple transfer of managerial and organizational skills, techniques, values and culture from developed countries to Russia is a false assumption among academics and practitioners.

This book investigates the concepts and instruments for managing change in companies striving towards a market orientation in transition economies. The focus is on the identification of factors, which have led to the considerable success of certain corporations, in spite of the very dynamic environment in transition countries since 1989. The analysis considers problems and solutions for all the relevant stakeholder relationships. Although the case study is largely based on Poland, the book also contains research on the economic, political and social context of doing business in Central and Eastern Europe.

The work is a practical examination of fundamental strategic issues confronted by firms competing in newly opened markets. It covers emerging markets in East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe and the new states of the former Soviet Union.

In Economic Development and Transition, renowned development economist Justin Yifu Lin argues that economic performance in developing countries depends largely on government strategy. If the government plays a facilitating role, enabling firms to exploit the economy's comparative advantages, its economy will develop successfully. However, governments in most developing countries attempt to promote industries that go against their comparative advantages by creating various kinds of distortion to protect nonviable firms in priority industries. Failing to recognize the original intention of many distortions, most governments in transition economies attempt to eliminate those distortions without addressing firms' viability problems, causing economic performance to deteriorate in their transition process. Governments in successful transition economies adopt a pragmatic dual-track approach that encourages firms to enter sectors that were suppressed previously and gives necessary support to firms in priority industries before their viability issue is addressed.

A transition economy is an economy which is changing from a planned economy to a free market. Transition economies undergo economic liberalisation (letting market forces set prices and lowering trade barriers), macroeconomic stabilisation where immediate high inflation is brought under control, and restructuring and privatisation in order to create a financial sector and move from public to private ownership of resources. These changes often may lead to increased inequality of incomes and wealth, dramatic inflation and a fall of GDP. Transition process is usually characterised by the changing and creating of institutions, particularly private enterprises; changes in the role of the state, thereby, the creation of fundamentally different governmental institutions and the promotion of private-owned enterprises, markets and independent financial institutions. This new book presents the latest research from around the world in this field.

China is the largest emerging market in the world, yet Western MNCs have invested significantly less there than their Asian MNC counterparts. Luo systematically compares Western and Asian investment strategies and their performance in China and draws lessons that Westerners must heed. He compares Western and Asian MNCs on their respective economic rationales, cultural proximity, strategy behavior, investment structure, business determinants, and performance differences. He also reviews foreign direct investment in China over two decades, outlines the economic environment facing MNCs today, delineates new policies that affect foreign investment and operations, and discusses China's entry into the World Trade Organization and the impact this will have on MNCs everywhere. The result is a needed contribution to the literature on international investment and the China market, particularly for upper level executives, analysts studying emerging markets, and scholars specializing in international business and expansion. In Part I, Luo reviews the experience of MNCs in China and the opportunities and challenges, today and in coming years. In Part II he looks at the strategy, structure, and performances of Western and Asian MNCs. He assesses and compares strategic and structural behaviors of these two groups of MNCs, then deciphers and compares the differences in distinctive capabilities and their performance implications. In other chapters he examines and compares financial performance and its business determinants—thus giving executives of Western MNCs a way to verify the effectiveness of their own investment and operating strategies and to reconfigure them, if necessary, to include environmental dynamics and organizational capabilities. In addition to mini-cases throughout the book, there is an appendix consisting of six major case studies, detailing the experiences and successes of six Asian MNCs in China, offering a seldom seen glimpse of how the West's Asian competitors accomplish their own goals, and why the challenges they present to the West are so formidable.

​The decision to diversify lies at the core of corporate strategy and is one of the most important decisions for top management. Matthias Knecht introduces a new perspective on corporate diversification that extends the academic discussion and reveals substantial new insights with regards to one of the most pressing questions in strategic management: what makes a diversification strategy successful? The author introduces the dynamism of industries as the dominant force in the firm’s environment that influences the organization on all levels. Due to strategic, organizational, and managerial similarities of businesses competing in similar dynamic environments, synergistic benefits and superior economic performance can be realized through the combination of dynamic-related businesses in the corporate portfolio. This study provides a quantitative, multidimensional operationalization of industry dynamism and an in-depth assessment of the dynamism of a wide range of industries. At the core of the study lies the investigation of the performance impact of dynamic-related diversification strategies. The results provide new insights into successful portfolio construction strategies in the face of today’s dynamic environments.