Autori
Onetti, Alberto
Fratocchi, Luciano
Pisoni, Alessia

Titolo
Subsidiary's embeddedness of italian SMEs in central and eastern european countries (CEECs)
Periodico
Università degli Studi dell'Insubria. Dipartimento di Economia. Quaderni di ricerca
Anno: 2007 - Fascicolo: 3 - Pagina iniziale: 1 - Pagina finale: 26

This paper is focused on relationships which involves the subsidiary both, at an internal (mainly with the headquarter) and at an external level (with economic actors at a local level, i.e. customers and suppliers). In so doing, corporate and external embeddedness (Andersson and Forsgren, 1996) are investigated under a network based approach. To reach this aim, the level of autonomy and control perceived by the subsidiary and the range of value chain activities managed at local level are used as proxy of the degree of corporate embeddedness. At the same time, the number, frequency, and type of relations activated with local supplier and customers and the number and types of cooperation agreements with local enterprises are used to investigate external embeddedness. The attention is focused on Italian SMEs internationalized in the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). With this respect, the sample is composed by firms that widely differ in terms of location, size, year of subsidiary establishment, and industry. The main evidence resulting from the analysis is that in the CEECs – and particularly in the more developed countries within the Region (such as Poland) – is emerging a phenomenon we define “re-localization”. By this term we describe a rising number of firms that is progressively transferring in these countries a wider range of activities, including the more value added ones. The delocalization of less value added activities (typically high-labour intensive and not complex manufacturing) was generally considered the main strategic aim for companies in the CEECs. Our data, on the contrary, seems to demonstrate that such a delocalization do not represent the ultimate result of the internationalization process, but only a step of a wider process. A process aimed at transferring abroad the whole value chain activities in order to serve the local market. Therefore, the internationalization of most of the analysed firms is market-oriented, i.e. aimed at looking for a new market, able to replace the Italian one.



Testo completo: http://eco.uninsubria.it/dipeco/quaderni/files/QF2007_3.pdf

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