engleski

The Managerial Elite, Organizational Models and Socio-Economic Culture: Some Preliminary Findings from Croatia

There is a huge discussion occuring in postsocialist countries when speaking about the appropriate theoretical and empirical approaches toward the changes of socioeconomic culture within and outside enterprises in these countries. Many “ simple questions” raised in this discussion cause long-term problems to scholars and researchers because there are no simple and definite answers on them. We also do not pretend to give the ‘ final’ answers on these questions. However, on the case of Croatia (using the data produced within the international project After the Accession: The Socio-Economic Culture of Eastern Europe in the Enlarged Union: An Asset or a Liability?, initiated and coordinated from the beginning of 2002 till the end of 2003 by the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) from Vienna) we’ ll try to put some light and outline some hypotheses about one particular aspect of the socioeconomic transformation within postsocialist enterprises – that one which regards the roles of new economic elites in introducing new business practice and organizational models they are applying trying to set new types of social and economic rationality inside and outside the organizations they are working for. We defined several general hypotheses in this paper. First, we assumed that new types of rationality and socioeconomic cultural patterns within Croatian enterprises are introduced by foreign and domestic managers (mostly in foreign owned companies), as well as by a part of local managers and entrepreneurs which are making business with foreign owned companies. Strategic organizational roles are mostly played by foreign managers while the domestic managers are mostly dealing with people and internal organization of labour. Second, the development of new business culture in larger companies (especially in those ones with strong organization cultures) is mostly the result of the new organizational models introduced by foreign owners and managers. In smaller enterprises new business culture behaviour is very often dependent on personal management styles applied by incumbent managers. Third, new types of rationality and socioeconomic cultural patterns are mostly accepted by domestic managers but they are not allways welcomed by workers and trade unions. The question is how that potential cultural gap regarding new types of rationality and business culture will evolve: towards gradual acceptance of new ('Western') socioeconomic cultural standards, toward some hybrid forms of mutual co-existence of the old and new socioeconomic culture or it will develop towards the total rejection of new socioeconomic cultural demands? These hypotheses were as preliminary findings corroborated. However, only new researches based on larger samples of foreign and Croatian managers can give more reliable conclusions regarding the issues presented in this work.

managerial elite; organizational models; socio-economic culture; Croatia

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