Learning to love restructuring

Over the past seven years Polish companies have had to restructure to survive. New accounting rules have helped improve the quality of management. And Polish workers have begun to understand that foreign investment brings with it security and new technology. By Graham Field

Poland has emerged as the Wunderkind of the central European economies. The drastic reforms launched in January 1990 turned it into the fastest-growing economy in Europe by 1995. At the micro-level, enterprises were subjected to competition from the start. The lesson of Poland is that the restructuring process is affected more by market conditions than by the form of ownership.

“The discipline of the market has been exerted from day one,” says Mark Schaffer, a British economist who studies eastern Europe.

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