Austria and especially Vienna have gained a strong reputation as a CEE hub due to their very good strategical positions between East and West. More than 200 foreign multinationals have established their regional CEE headquarters in Austria, including big players such as Henkel, Mondi and Lukoil. Besides that, more than 1,850 Austrian companies have their subsidiaries in at least one of the CEE countries. Austria is the biggest foreign investor in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia and according to the WKO, there are in total more than 400,000 employees of Austrian companies working in the CEE region. In addition, firms from Austria continue to be heavily interested in investing into the region due to persisting labor shortages at home and low labor costs in the region. Despite this interest, firms lack detailed knowledge on where to invest, what to expect from local management practices and how to deal with some CEE region specific issues.

This only shows that many of the current students might get a chance to work in a CEE subsidiary, regional headquarters for CEE or do consulting projects for companies in the CEE region. For this reason, the objective of the course is to better understand CEE business environment, reasons behind management decisions related to organizational structure and which things they need to have in mind when developing a strategy for CEE countries. We start with key economic and business characteristics of the region, followed by business characteristics from centrally planned and transition economies that still reflect the business environment in CEE today. We continue with analyzing organizational changes and factor markets in CEE and finish with the main business challenges and further perspectives of CEE economies. We will also have one guest lecture (a renowned consultant with significant experience in the region) where we will discuss practical issues that Western managers are facing when working in/for the CEE region.

Regular attendance is a requirement to pass this course. You cannot be absent for more than 20% of the total course time.

This course is comprised of lectures, a guest lecture (a renowned consultant with a significant experience in the region), in-class case analyses, one smaller and one larger team research project. This is a highly interactive course. Thus, students are expected to be fully engaged and participate in class discussions. The course is designed in such a way as to maximize your learning by balancing between lecture and your involvement in discussions, cases, and exercises.

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