Golbalization, institutional legacies and industrial transformation in Eastern Europ

Abstract

Companies are integrated into the world economy in a number of ways. This article, starting from a sympathetic, though critical engagement with the global commodity chains (GCC) perspective, explores the extent to whcih this perspective is relevant to the analysis of the international firm networks that have developed in Estern Europe. In so doing the article examines the wayus the institutional legacies of the state socialist past and inherited macro-and micro-economic structures influence the integration of the region's companies into global production networks. While the authors do not deny the existence of inter-firm relations similar to the ones described by the GCC perspective, they point out that the situation in Eastern Europe is much more complex than in the developing world, and its complexity is a product of the very different historical backgrounds and modes of incorporation in the world economy that Eastern European countries have experienced. Drawing on a number of case studies from the automobile components and electronics industries in the region (and particularly in Hungary), the authorse argue that there are avariety of firm-centred developmental trajectories afoot, and these have differing implications for the integration of the firms and economies of Eastern Europ into the world economy. In conclusion, the authors argue that in the interests of rendering the GCC perspective a more effective tool for analysing developments in Eastern Europe, more space needs to be accorded to the consequences of the distinctive forms of capitalism that are emerging there.