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– 15 – CEE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT THROUGH THE EYES OF A WESTERN MANAGER Stuart Durrant P R E V I E W : C h a p t e r 1 . 1 . CHAPTER IN BRIEF:   Chapters of the first part of the book paint a bleak picture for the prospects of innovation in CEE.   The more engaged governments would hardly improve the quality of CEE business environment.   Although the overall assessment of the CEE business climate is grim, differences appear when we move to the country level. T he title of this chapter can easily be misinterpreted. The statement that this “preview” has been written through the eyes of a Western manager might be taken to imply that the author is perhaps about to pass judgment on the region; that the connotation of a “Western manager” might indicate an elevated status of knowledge and management practice compared to the author’s counterparts in the region. Alternatively, such a manager-author might be imagined to sit in rapt attention as a student, not a teacher, ready to be inundated with new information that is to be presented to him. This would help him, as an outsider, to have the first inkling, a weak grasp, of what is actually happening and what needs to be given special consideration in this youthful free market. In my case, based on over twenty-two years of management experience i6 FM.indb 15 2014.06.05. 12:20 – 16 – in the region, the truth lies somewhere in-between. Since 1990, I have observed and participated in the transition of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) business environment toward a free-market system. This may suggest a lack of ultimate objectivity through first-time analysis but I trust that my extended familiarity with the business terrain and local idiosyncrasies have enabled me to consider, in context, the offerings of other authors in this volume. One thing became swiftly clear to me—the first seven chapters of this book do not constitute an attempt to provide a manual or guidebook for how to do business in CEE. Such a complex manual would be superficial to the teacher and frustratingly obscure to the student. Instead, the opening chapters provide a series of vignettes that ultimately blend into a compelling narrative on what to look out for, rather than how to prosper in business terms. Whereas this author would not go as far as to refer to this as a cautionary tale in the grand nineteenth -century tradition, it does constitute a map that should serve as a valuable guide to the unwary. In the first part of this book, the authors have adopted different geographical approaches to the concept of CEE. For example, Yusaf Akbar and Vukan Vujic take one macro-approach of looking at corruption across many states incorporating the former Eastern Bloc. Noémi Alexa gives a single-country, first-hand analysis of Transparency International’s anti-corruption drive in Hungary, while the perspective offered by Charles Mayer limits them to a consideration of retail saturation in one medium-size town just north of Budapest. Nonetheless, the overall picture that emerges from considering the first part of this book is consistent in highlighting many of the issues and concerns that need to be borne in mind and carefully considered while doing business in the region. Trials and Tribulations of CEE’s Innovation In Chapter 1.2, György Bőgel introduces us to the concept of innovation and its changing geography in Europe’s emerging countries. Drawing on research compiled from The Atlantic Century 2011 report on innovation and competitiveness and referencing the EU’s Innovation Union Scoreboard, the author points out that none of the emerging countries in Europe are considered to be innovation leaders, despite being able to point to strong growth trends in innovation itself.This however may be considered as simply “making the best of a bad job.” Bőgel’s observation that private capital accounts for the largest segment of research and development expenditure in Hungary, and Anna Turner’s incisive comments on the difficulties associated with raising capital presented in Chapter 1.3 fit together well. The natural conclusion that can be drawn from considering these assertions together is that Hungary, along with other CEE countries with similar socio-political dynamics, is suffering in the innovation stakes from the effect of minimal central stimulus in the field of R&D with severe limitations in the ability to actually raise capital from the private sector. The clear...

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