Channels of restructuring in privatized Czech companies

The main contribution of this paper to the literature on restructuring in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe is the analysis of productivity-growth effects for different channels of restructuring. It examines a panel of 737 voucher-privatized Czech companies in the first years after the transfer of ownership (between 1993 and 1998). The results indicate that asset sales and employee incentives serve as restructuring channels through which productivity of the privatized companies increases. The analysis also indicates that capital expenditures, labour shedding and CEO replacements are not significantly correlated to productivity growth. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that the availability of bank loans is positively associated with productivity growth, but not for less profitable firms. This provides some evidence in support of soft budget constraints accommodated via bank lending

Hierarchy of governance institutions and the pecking order of privatisation: Central–Eastern Europe and Central Asia reconsidered

This article discusses property rights, corporate governance frameworks and privatisation outcomes in the Central–Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA) region. We argue that while CEECA still suffers from deficient ‘higher order’ institutions, this is not attracting sufficient attention from international institutions like EBRD and the World Bank, which focus on ‘lower order’ indicators. We discuss factors that may alleviate the negative impact of the weakness in institutional environment and argue for the pecking order of privatisation, where equivalent privatisation is given a priority but speed is not compromised.

Understanding Top Management and Organizational Change Through Demographic and Processual Analysis

Top management theory has been strongly influenced by demographic studies of top management teams (TMTs), but not by research into organizational adaptation to conditions of extreme institutional turbulence. This article analyses the transformation of a post-socialist enterprise through a combination of demographic and processual methods to develop an enriched account of the micro-processes through which top management constructed organizational change. Adding layers of narrative data and processual explanation directly addresses the well rehearsed problems in demographic TMT studies. From the findings, we propose a set of theoretical arguments that conceptualizes top management in terms of management regimes, to which TMTs are politically tied and through which they seek to realize their values and strategies in organizational outcomes. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.