Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

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