Institutional configurations and industrial dynamics in the Central and East European automotive sector

Abstract:

  In the last two decades, the automobile industry in Central and Eastern Europe has experienced tremendous growth, partly at odds with the trends in the rest of Europe. However, in spite of the swift upgrading and development of local supply networks, the region has remained integrated into the European production architecture primarily as a production location, its growth driven almost entirely by the concerns of international manufacturers which exceed the borders of this region, and certainly those of the national economies. The paper explores this tension between the national and international and the partial embeddedness of the production cluster in the local institutional structures via the four institutionalized relationships (employment, finance, purchase and commercial) in order to trace the outline of the emerging configuration of the automotive sector in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the potential threats to its sustainability in the medium term.