Organising FDI promotion in Central–Eastern European regions

Abstract

Increasing contest for lucrative FDI projects requires national and more importantly regional authorities to actively compete and promote their areas. The issues of organisational settings and networks remain among the most important determinants of successful FDI attraction strategies. The organisation of promotional efforts, especially on the regional level, impacts strategic choices and divides responsibilities allowing for increase in efficiency by effective use of resources and promotional techniques. It also influences the definition of a regional product, choice of target groups, competition perception and the coherence of the region's projected image. Using primary data collected in Czech, Polish and Slovak regions this paper investigates the links between the emerging organisational frameworks and strategic choices of agencies involved in regional promotion. Various levels of authority centralisation, characterising the three identified frameworks, are not clearly reflected in activities of individual agencies.

A framework of place branding, place image, and place reputation

“…Nation branding has been defined as "the strategic self-presentation of a country with the aim of creating reputational capital through economic, political and social interest promotion at home and abroad" (Szondi, 2008, p.5). The domain of nation branding extends beyond a consumer focus on tourism promotion (Dinnie et al, 2010;Pike, 2005) to include extra functions such as investment attraction (Arregle et al, 2009;Capik, 2007;Cho et al, 2009;Lee and Rugman, 2009), export promotion (Tesfom et al, 2004) and public diplomacy, which is the dialogue with foreign publics designed to inform and influence (Cowan and Cull, 2008;Fullerton et al, 2009). …”

Nation branding for foreign direct investment: an Integrative review and directions for research and strategy

“…Such zones now dot the globe, with more than 130 countries having at least one and a global total of over 3,500 zones of all kinds, many of which offer better infrastructure and facilities than their countries' surrounding "general" territory (Papadopoulos and Malhotra, 2007;WEPZA 2012). As illustrated by an advertisement from South Korea (The Economist, 2006), which urges companies to "Invest in Korea's Free Economic Zone" because of its strategic location in Northeast Asia, such zones tend to emphasize not so much the country where they are located but their dual function as: Taking the above comments together, places of various kinds may compete against one another at the intra-country level in order to attract investment not only internationally but also from within their own country (Capik, 2007), thus bringing the "domestic" component into the "foreign" Figure 1 The conundrum of coordinated place marketing direct investment discussion. Yet, although research examining various levels individually is developing, at least to an extent, studies on cross-level competitive and other issues in branding for FDI are virtually non-existent, pointing to the potential of an entirely new sub-stream of research that might incorporate "locational" research from FDI, level-specific and comparative studies on various types of "place" from the place marketing literature and FTZ/ SEZ insights from the focused literature that examines those zones.…”

Foreign Direct Investments in Business Services: Transforming the Visegrád Four Region into a Knowledge-based Economy?

“…Having found themselves competing in the same niche of the market for FDI, all states in the V4 region developed similar policies towards foreign investors by the end of the 1990s (Capik 2007;Drahokoupil 2008). In the context of the EU accession in 2004, the CEECs had to make their investment schemes compatible with EU regulations on state support, leading to further narrowing of differences in investment promotion policies.…”