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

ALEKSANDRA JANOVSKAIA
suggested abandoning car production in
favour of automotive components for foreign
car producers (Pavlínek 2008: 80). Also, the
government, as company owner, did not want
to take a high financial risk and the option of
government-led restructuring of the company
and its subsequent privatisation were ruled out
due to the fact that neither the government nor
the banks were ready to guarantee the capital
needed, despite the fact that the domestic and
foreign demand were estimated to be far above
production capacity (Pavlínek 2008: 80). Thus,
Škoda was a troubled company with its East
European markets collapsing; its financial
position was close to bankruptcy.
Yet market-oriented rationale has been
restrained by non-economic organising logic.
Thus, already during the privatisation process,
next to the market-oriented logic of cost
efficiency and market pricing, a ‘productionist’
attitude of local stakeholders has become visible.
Industrial traditions and industrial capabilities,
rather than pure financial returns-oriented
thinking, were important to local stakeholders.
Due to its over 100-year-old history, Škoda’s
reputation as a ‘family jewel’ was strong. It
gave stakeholders the legitimacy to demand
a continuation of firm activities. A foreign
partner that would enter the joint venture was
expected to invest in the company in order
to improve quality and expand production
volume (Pavlínek 2008). Thus, the solution
of joint venture can, in this light, be seen as
a compromise of the two logics – letting the
‘market forces’ in the form of a foreign investor
enter the scene, while at the same time ensuring
the survival and preservation of already existing
local industrial capabilities. Thus, Škoda’s
example demonstrates that local stakeholders
valued the company as a source of industrial
capabilities and wanted to preserve these.
The dramatic financial situation of Škoda might
even explain the eagerness of the Czechoslovak
government to privatise such an important
industrial project at such a fast pace. In other
Visegrad countries, if important industrial
projects existed, they were either privatised
but remained in domestic ownership, as in
the case of Hungarian industrial giant Raba,
or they were privatised much later following
prolonged negotiations and a search for the
‘right’ partner, as in the case of Polish FSO.
Thus, a comparison across national borders
allows us to conclude that Škoda’s foreign
privatisation in itself can be interpreted in
this context as evidence of the ‘productionist’
logic, as marketisation through privatisation
had as its final goal the strengthening of the
company’s industrial capabilities.
Large-scale government-led restructuring
plans and with them more advantageous
valuations of companies were ruled out
quite early in the three cases of brownfield
investments analysed in more depth in this
study: Czech Škoda, Polish Tarpan and Slovak
BAZ. In the case of Škoda, the government
demands went furthest. This is what makes us
focus on Škoda’s privatisation in the rest of this
section. These demands went beyond general
investment demands and covered,
among other things, preservation of
the Škoda brand. Yet why were these
page 83
advanced ‘productionist’ demands
for preserving industrial capabilities
formulated and followed in Škoda, but not in
its former supplier Slovak BAZ or in Polish
Tarpan? The explanation has to do with the