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

AGNIESZKA REFERENCES LITERATUR K. CIANCIARA
resulting from the late and largely obsolete
industrialization under state socialism.
In the Polish case, a crucial role was played
in the privatization process by multinational
corporations, which ensured capital, technology,
know-how and access to foreign markets for
the restructured companies. However, the first
transformation phase was to a large extent
dominated by capitalism from above created
by the economic and technocratic elites of
the ancien regime. Finally, success of private
companies that did not have access to resources
of the socialist economy, only became visible
after the year 2000. The economic crisis in the
late ‘90s eliminated actors that relied mostly on
political resources and were not able to cope
with requirements of the competitive market
economy. The expansion of Polish private
capital was also accelerated by EU membership
and prospects for greater internationalization
of Polish firms. However, it appears that
Europeanization of economic activities has
been progressing faster than Europeanization
of interest representation.
Polish capitalism is thus characterized by a
relatively large public sector (slow pace of
privatization), weak corporate governance
mechanisms (especially in public sector), a
relatively poor business climate, inefficient
governance structures of the state, weak
economic and political culturea, as well as weak
institutionalization of interest representation.
The public sector accounts for approximately 3%
of firms operating in Poland. However, 7 out
of the 10 largest companies in the year 2008
were at least partially state-owned (‘500 biggest
firms in Poland’ by daily Rzeczpospolita, 2009).
In 2005, 162 (12.5%) of 1300 biggest firms
in Poland were at least partially state-owned,
but they generated 22.5% of net income and
employed more than 40% of the workforce
(CASE, 2007). Though in the years 2002-
2007 the number of public firms among the
500 biggest companies decreased from 128
to 81, this was linked to the rapid expansion
of Polish private capital after joining the
EU in 2004, rather than to the process of
privatization. The level of internationalization
of Polish firms is still low and 96.3% of them
are micro-firms, employing up to 9 people
(Ministry of Economy, 2009).
Weaknesses of the corporate governance system
are particularly visible in the biggest stateowned
companies 5 . In post-communist state,
due to private capital shortages, the German
(internal control through supervisory board),
rather than Anglo-Saxon system (external
control mechanisms by dispersed shareholders)
was introduced. However, Central-European
experience shows that control is much
more effective when a company is being
restructured by a foreign strategic investor.
In case of continuous state ownership,
the commercialization of the enterprise
constitutes only a minor adjustment to formal
market requirements, while petrifying existing
economic, political and social networks of
informal nature. Consequently, supervisory
and executive boards of state-owned
companies often demonstrate classic
traits of political corruption ( Jarosz, Seite Page page 49
2006). These executives are strongly
embedded in political elites, thus the
rotation in these posts depends on the current
constellation of the unstable political scene.
Posts are perceived as rewards for party loyalty,