Relational Mechanisms of Globalizing Postsocialism : A Sequence Approach to Foreign Investment and Large Firm Ownership in Hungary , 1991 - 1999

This article operationalizes and tests the argument that “history matters” in a multiple pathway model of globalizing postsocialism, a period with radical economic transformations. Sequence analysis is utilized to identify typical careers of firms through ownership forms that indicate relational processes as responses to varying uncertainties. Regression models of efficiency and growth indicate that history matters on the micro level: there are significant differences between firms by the path they took to their present form of ownership. The context of pathways is then analyzed to explain the transformation of ownership on the macro level. Dynamic scaling analysis of pathway conjunctures and branching indicates that relational strategies devised to buffer firms from institutional uncertainties shape relational strategies in the later period of market adaptation in a globalized economy.