Industries in Central and Eastern Europe. Enhancing Competitiveness by Integrating Services into Manufacturing

• Authors: Sorin Burnete
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

During the last two decades, the intra-industry trade between western companies and former socialist enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe gradually shifted from the subcontracting of marginal operations such as final assembly to the outsourcing of products and intermediate inputs. To further enhance their competitiveness, firms in Central and Eastern Europe have yet to take one more step forward: integrate services with manufacturing. Developing such capabilities hinges, aside from intensive training and learning on the existence of functional interactive knowledgebased innovation systems. Whereas Central and East European economies exhibit conspicuous weaknesses in this last respect, they still possess a countervailing advantage that is apt to lure foreign investors into the region: lower wage rates relative to western countries across all industries and skill levels. Offshoring therefore seems to be the most appropriate means to reconcile the two sides of the coin.

Keywords

EN

Offshoring; Servitization; Skill intensity; Supply chain

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human and Social Studies
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 30-42

Dates

published

2015-03-01

online

2015-04-10

Contributors

author

Sorin Burnete

• Department of Management, Marketing and Business Administration, ”Lucian Blaga” Uniersity, 17, Calea Dumbravii, Sibiu 550324

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/hssr-2015-0003