Soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain, it became clear that the end of state socialism in Eastern Europe did not necessarily imply the end of state domination over the economy and firm practices. Early studies found, that the post-socialist state – through its control over the banking system for instance – continued to influence firm-level strategies regarding product innovation, restructurings, supply chains, and human resource management (Whitley & Czaban, 1998a, 1998b). More generally, management scholars, political scientists, and sociologists found that the role of the state in post-socialist economies remained much more prominent and much more complex than initial optimistic accounts of “transition” and the “retreat of the state” had suggested (Martin, 2002, 2013; Schoenman, 2005; Stark, 1996; Stark & Bruszt, 2001). Thus, the initial retreat of the socialist state was slower than expected during the early 1990s. More recently, various transition economies may even experience a return of the state as an active player in the economy in its own right (Bremmer, 2008; Kurlantzick, 2016; Musacchio, Lazzarini, & Aguilera, 2015l; Sallai & Schnyder, 2018). In such cases, the state does not only intervene as a regulator – as the ideal-typical idea of liberal capitalism would have it – , but also as an owner of large companies, and designer of industrial policy directed towards promoting certain industries over others (see Hofman, Moon, & Wu, 2017).
This special issue invites papers addressing questions related to these three topics:
- The impact of the role of the state in post-socialist and post-soviet countries on firm-level outcomes and strategies
- firms’ non-market strategies in response to post-socialist states
- state-business relationships in post-socialist countries
Submission deadline:
June 15, 2019 5pm CET