ABSTRACT
The internationalisation of companies from emerging markets is becoming an area of primary interest in IB research. This chapter focuses on investment from the BRIC countries Brazil, Russia, India and China to the Visegrad group consisting of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. The major goal of the research presented in the chapter is to establish whether foreign direct investment (FDI) net positions among the BRIC and Visegrad countries fit the IDP stages model. The chapter presents the investment development path (IDP) theory, and then reviews IDP research on FDI in the context of central European countries. It explores the results of an empirical study of FDI flows between the Visegrad and BRIC countries. The chapter concerns the explanatory value of IDP in the specific context of investment flows among recently developed and rapidly developing countries. The transition from centrally planned, Soviet-dependent economies into market-oriented, sovereign democracies began with negotiated revolution and the Solidarity movement in Poland.
