New Europe College Regional Program Yearbook 2001-2002

DENIZ EYLEM YÖRÜK
like rising incomes, homogenization of tastes (demand for ethnic foods);
rising employment of married women (ready-made meals); increased
pressure and stress in life (snacking); global competition among producers
for market share restructured tastes in the world (Coca Cola, McDonald’s,
etc.). For example in packaging, the new processes are designed to meet
consumer demands for (i) ease of use (e.g., ring-pull cans and tear-strip
openings), (ii) new eating habits (as for ready meals), (iii) food safety
(e.g., avoiding the ‘migration’ of packaging into the product), (iv)
environmental friendliness (e.g., avoiding non-biodegradable and wasteful
packaging). In these respects, the process changes have aligned with
product innovations as responses to shifting consumer demands (for details
see Christensen et al., 1996).
The permeation of food-processing technology by industries such as
biotechnology, pharmaceuticals (e.g., to develop special vitamins that
are not destroyed at high temperatures), advanced materials (whose use
in the packaging industry has generated product innovations, especially
in the cases of frozen food and ready-made products) and other high-tech
industries has been a recent phenomenon that mitigates the backwardness
of the food-processing industry in terms of research and development.
This has introduced and strengthened the need for collaboration with
other firms and industries, encouraging horizontal spillovers of
technological know-how.
4. Research Methodology
The conceptual framework of this research is tested through empirical
work with data collected from four multinational and four Romanian
large food enterprises as well as one special case (a small Romanian
university spin-off firm). In order to achieve a comprehensive understanding
of the industrial upgrading (at the firm level) and networks relationship,
this research was conducted at the firm level instead of the industry
level, but it will place firms in the context of the mezzo environment of
the ‘industry’ or ‘sub-sector’ that surrounds them, not least because this is
a key determinant of their strategy (cf. Porter, 1990). Because the food
processing industry is a very competitive industry, I have coded the
company names.
I will make use of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm calls “grass root
history”, i.e., gathering information not only from information codified in
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