ABSTRACT
Entrepreneurship in transition countries plays an important potential role in facilitating the shift from a centrally planned towards a market-based system. Empirical evidence shows that entrepreneurship under transition conditions takes a variety of different forms and enterprises use various strategies that partly reflect the external environment for private enterprise in these countries. This chapter adopts an institutional perspective to analyze entrepreneurship and enterprise strategies in transition economies. It draws on empirical results from various large-scale surveys as case studies jointly undertaken in several countries in Eastern Europe. The chapter shows a variety of enterprise strategies used by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in transition economies, which are a reaction to the specific external environmental conditions that pertain and which can be interpreted through an institutional perspective. In brief, in an institutional perspective the enterprise strategies of SMEs in transition economies are rational and adequate, albeit short-term reactions to imperfect and incompatible formal and informal institutions.
