ABSTRACT
Foreign investment in Hungarian production companies has been playing an important role in the transition process to a market-oriented economy since the early 1990s. Foreign buyers have brought to Hungary both access to export markets and the necessary and scarce resources needed for company transition. This chapter looks at the proposition that history — in the form of culturally founded patterns of construing reality — matters at the level of company transition to a market orientation. The concept of culture recognizes both the cumulative influence of history and the ongoing process of the creation of meaning. The chapter provides a summation of information gathered through interviews in the fall of 1996 with fourteen Hungarian informants and two from 1995. One of the interviewees was a senior consultant in a management consulting firm, and another involved in a joint venture association. Informal networks exist today, and are seen in typical Hungarian companies as a necessary qualification for being a good manager.
