East-West Industrial Cooperation: The Swedish Case

Abstract

Although industrial cooperation is an important means for the East to acquire western technology, most of the Swedish companies interviewed are rather reluctant to engage in such cooperation. They often cooperate in order to protect a market or to promote exports of be other products, and the partners seldom strive toward a common goal. This increases the risk of problems during the implementation of the agreements; problems of quality, delivery failures from the East, and management and coordination are especially frequent; the latter 2 are strongly associated with unsuccessful results. Complicated agreements involving several partners have a tendency to fail. The differences between the 2 economic and political systems manifest themselves in management styles, freedom to act, and so on, and make it difficult to integrate operations. East-West industrial cooperation, therefore, seldom leads to an intensive integration where the partners specialize and supplement each other.