Who is Hybridising What? Insights on MNCs’ employment practices in Central Europe

Introduction The enlargement of the EU to ten new countries, of which eight postcommunist countries with significantly lower labour costs, has increased the opportunities for international reorganisation of production for multinational companies (MNCs) and, with this, for ‘coercive comparisons’ and efficiency-oriented transfers of practices. This paper discusses the dynamics in place through two longitudinal case studies on two foreign investors that are active in the region since the beginning of the economic transformation in Central Europe. The two cases represent opposite situations: a greenfield investment in a non-union site by a medium-size company versus a large MNCs investing in strongly unionised brownfield sites (the first company will not be named for confidentiality reasons, the second will in order to avoid ridiculousness). Both cases, through different paths, show that the transfer of practices by MNCs in Central Europe leads to hybridised outcomes, but with dynamics that are hardly understandable through the lens of prevalent images of ‘hybridisation’. Rather than the country of origin pushing through its models against host country constraints and resistance, it is the host country that attracts MNCs and encourages innovation. In a way, this is the opposite of what views of MNCs as ‘missionaries’ would suggest. Such a situation, it will be argued, requires a better understanding of power relations at play and of actors’ strategies (‘who’ is hybridising) and a better analytical distinction of the different practices that are transferred or adapted (‘what’ is being hybridised). The structure of the paper is as follows: a first section will discuss existing debates on hybridisation; a second one will quickly introduce to the specificities of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Central Europe; the third and fourth one will discuss the two case studies; and the conclusion will make some theoretical and policy observations.