International Industrial Marketing into Eastern Europe Available to Purchase

This monograph commences with a survey of previous publications on the concepts, volume and structure of industrial co‐operation agreements between East and West. In the context, the term “East” refers to those socialist countries of Eastern Europe which are members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), namely USSR, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and the German Democratic Republic (GDR); and the term (West) refers to the non‐socialist industrially developed nations of Western Europe, North America and Asia. The author presents case studies of six British engineering companies having experience of industrial co‐operation with Eastern European foreign trade organisations. The USSR has been excluded, since case studies of Anglo‐Soviet industrial co‐operation had already been published by the present author (Hill, 1978) before the commencement of the study described in this paper; and the GDR has also been excluded because of that country's comparatively low level of involvement in East/West industrial co‐operation. The case studies highlight the practical advantages and disadvantages of East‐West industrial co‐operation to British companies; this is considered to be particularly relevant since British firms may have to be more willing to engage in this type of business activity if they wish to remain in the East European market place.