Industrial Integration and Growth of Firm in Transition Economies: The case of a French Multinational Company

In the last decade, the prospect of accession of Central and East European countries (CEECs) to the European Union has given momentum to the discussion of their economic integration into the EU. Thus, academic studies have generally focused on variables at the macro level and are conducted in the light of quantitative methodologies in social sciences. This paper instead focuses mainly on the industrial integration of the CEECs into the EU at the firm and inter-organisational level, and uses in-depth, face-to-face interview techniques. Examining the growth of a multinational firm that operates in CEE in the context of networks help us to determine the depth of east-west industrial networks. In this light, the aim of this paper is to contribute to the development of the ‘network alignment’ framework from the perspective of the multinational companies located and operating in CEE. The growth of the French Soufflet Group in CEECs is taken as an exemplar to demonstrate the need to link the elements of the existing literature on foreign direct investment (multinational companies) with an evolutionary approach, through consideration of evolving and multiple networks.