5.2 Sources of evidence: introduction to the case studies

The evidence on the behaviour of firms in transition economies is drawn mainly from case studies by the World Bank under its project ˜Enterprise Behavior and Economic Reforms . Two rounds of interviews were carried out in Czechoslovakia (subsequently the Czech Republic), Hungary and Poland. These countries were selected in part because transition was most advanced there when the project was designed. For each country, a local project leader was selected and a team of case study writers was assembled . These teams selected firms according to a common selection process that was designed to cover the major sectors of the economy, to include a variety of ownership forms, size and likelihood of economic survival, and to be flexible enough to allow for national peculiarities and the willingness of managers to participate in the interviews and data collection. The interviews, data gathering and presentation were carried out according to a common format.

The first round of 36 case studies was completed in late 1992. The 36 cases and a synthesis of their implications were published in Estrin et al . (1995). The second round of 18 cases, completed in late 1993 and early 1994, was published in Brada and Singh (1998). These cases were supplemented by eight additional case studies of Hungarian firms in 1992 (Brada et al ., 1994) and six additional case studies of Polish firms in 1994 (Wosinska, 1995).

The use of a common questionnaire and a small team of case writers gave a consistency of approach and an interpretive validity that permitted stronger inferences to be drawn than would have been possible with cases compiled for differing objectives and by disparate methods and researchers. The use of parallel cases from three countries also helped to guard against bias, especially as the cross-country comparisons were accompanied by efforts to match some firms across countries by sector, size or ownership type.

Nevertheless there may have been an element of self-selection in the sample because firms that were doing well in the transition were perhaps more willing to participate in the survey than those that were likely to fail. While such self-selection would pose problems for some types of analysis, the purpose of this inquiry was to identify the commonalities in behaviour that existed among firms that appeared to be restructuring successfully. Thus an overweighting of the sample towards successful firms was desirable. The sample nevertheless included firms that were liquidated or dismantled after the case studies were written, as well as firms whose future is still in doubt.