Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
AUTOMOTIVE MNCS IN CENTRAL EUROPE<br />
nor pay attention if exports are working fine, if<br />
the [Slovak] crown is up or down. Buy cheap, sell<br />
expensive. Buy a Lamborghini; go on holidays in<br />
the Caribbean. This was the first privatisation.<br />
They did not know much about the industry. Their<br />
way of thinking was: ‘certainly one day someone<br />
will come who will want to buy it from me and<br />
it is my aim to sell it then. So, it was all around<br />
the speculation motive. […] After a few years,<br />
now it is clearer - the best way was when the<br />
management made a buy-out. It could be a factory<br />
producing colours, painting. They would say: we<br />
work here for 20 years, we know the company well<br />
- we shall decide about its future, we continue to<br />
develop it. This was a positive privatisation<br />
(Interview March 2007).<br />
Investors are thus clearly differentiated between<br />
those with productionst attitudes and the rest.<br />
There are those who are interested in investing<br />
in and developing the company and others<br />
who acquire companies for other reasons:<br />
speculation or reducing the competition.<br />
Thus, ‘real’ businesses are seen as long-term<br />
preservers of industrial capabilities. While<br />
VW subsidiaries are considered as successful<br />
cases of preserving and developing local<br />
industrial capabilities, the stakeholders quoted<br />
a large number of unsuccessful privatisations<br />
where industrial capabilities were destroyed.<br />
One such case is the foreign privatisation<br />
of a previously internationally renowned<br />
Hungarian bus producer Ikarus.<br />
Ikarus, one of the largest Hungarian<br />
page 100 bus producers in the state socialist<br />
era, was bought by an Italian bus<br />
producer Iveco in 1999. Its two plants<br />
were closed down in 2003 and 2007. A trade<br />
union leader wondered: ‘What was the point<br />
for Iveco to buy Ikarus, what was the interest<br />
[of the foreign investor]: to buy a competitor<br />
or to buy a plant with capacity?’ (Interview<br />
September 2008). The implicit argument<br />
behind this question is that the Italian bus<br />
producer bought its Hungarian competitor<br />
to reduce competition in the market and not<br />
to develop regional industrial capabilities –<br />
something the trade union leaders would have<br />
expected, as it would have been conform to the<br />
‘productionist logic’.<br />
CONCLUSION<br />
This paper demonstrated that some enterprises<br />
in post-communist Central Europe still<br />
function as sources of competitive industrial<br />
capabilities. Despite dramatic changes in the<br />
institutions of firm performance associated<br />
with cost efficiency and a stronger focus on the<br />
firm as an actor in product market competition,<br />
the local commitment to industrial capabilities<br />
that existed in state socialist times has at<br />
least partially been preserved. The increased<br />
financialisation of firm performance and the<br />
new cost-efficiency logic did not completely<br />
replace the non-economic old productionist<br />
enterprise norms of firm stakeholders.<br />
Company collective agreements have been good<br />
examples of coalitions of stakeholders with a<br />
productionist norm of upgrading company’s<br />
industrial capabilities and advancement within<br />
the group. In addition, this commitment to<br />
industrial capabilities has also been propagated<br />
outside the firm: enterprise development and<br />
industrial upgrading are considered an issue<br />
of public concern. Preserving and developing<br />
local and national industrial capabilities has<br />
been important for stakeholders inside and<br />
outside the company. Despite the emergence