A lever of transition: eWork in Central and Eastern Europe

The last decade of the 20th century was a period of transition from state-planned to market economies in the three Central European Newly Associated States (NAS) that participated in the EMERGENCE project: the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. At the end of the 1990s another cycle of the restructuring process was set in motion: a shift from the ‘old’ economy to the ‘new’ or ‘knowledge based’ economy. In this transformation process, economic and social forces are the drivers and ICT is the core vehicle or enabler. The EMERGENCE project provided a unique opportunity to locate the post-socialist economies of the Central European region in the emerging new division of labour in the e-economy in comparison with the EU (15). The global statistical analysis, the 18-country employer survey and the company case studies on the delocalisation of telemediated work helped us to make a thorough analysis and assessment of the diffusion of e-work.		Csaba Makó, Institute of Sociology, Budapest (ISB)

Some of the findings of this research run contrary to popular expectations based on press reports and anecdotes. Surprising though they might be, they are nevertheless consistent with studies by international institutions such as the OECD. They indicate that these three NAS countries have made remarkable progress in the field of eWork diffusion in comparison with the EU (15), at least insofar as larger establishments are concerned. Using a broad definition of eWork that includes outsourcing, one of the most unexpected results of the employer survey is that the share of eWork in the establishments surveyed in the NAS (3) is higher than in the EU (15) or in the Mediterranean countries, and is rather comparable to the Nordic region.

Most of this eWork takes the form of outsourcing, both to individual ‘eLancers’ and to firms supplying eServices. Not only are companies in these NAS countries more likely to use eOutsourcing; they are also more likely than the EU average to outsource across national borders. Unlike the Mediterranean region, however, these high levels of eOutsourcing are not embedded in a tradition of flexible specialisation within regional networks. On the contrary, they appear to reflect a very different historical trajectory: an attempt to enter the global economy (including the acquisition of expertise from other countries) as an escape from the institutional heritage of over-centralised and over-concentrated organisational practices inherited from the socialist-state past.

In this context, another difference from the EU is striking: the use of eWork is more skewed, both in terms of sectors and in terms of company size. In the NAS, eWork is more likely to be practiced in larger firms (some of which are foreign-owned) and less likely to be practiced in medium-sized firms, than the EU average. Similarly, there is a greater polarisation between high levels of eWork in the service sector (especially in business and financial services) and low levels in the primary and manufacturing industries. This suggests that the advances towards the new information economy are not distributed evenly: traditional industrial sectors and medium-sized establishments may be lagging behind in the development process.

The EMERGENCE case studies illustrate the complex and dynamic character of the delocalisation of business services using ICT in the NAS. One of the most innovative ‘best practices’ was represented by the case of an ‘internet broker firm’ which successfully linked up clients in the EU with eService suppliers regardless of location. This demonstrates very clearly how, and under what circumstances and conditions, ICTs may offer a powerful tool to enable micro-businesses and small firms to become global actors in the digital eEconomy. It is apparent that ICTs are opening up new opportunities for organisations to carry out their business activities on a global scale for the first time in their history, and small firms in Central and Eastern Europe are already seizing the chance of doing so.

eWork in the EU Candidate Countries, C Makó, R Keszi, P Tamási. IES Report 396.