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Describes the country‐specific conditions and developments in Central and Eastern Europe, the risks and opportunities of sourcing in this region and the measures necessary to implement supply systems including eastern suppliers. In order to use the future capabilities of eastern companies, it will be necessary to shape long‐running, cooperative relations. Four major tasks of implementing procurement systems involving suppliers from Central and Eastern Europe can be distinguished: the establishment of an appropriate internal organization to facilitate sourcing in Central and Eastern Europe; the identification, assessment, and selection of eastern suppliers; the development of suppliers′ capabilities and performance; and the implementation of logistical and legal relationships between the buyer and the supplier necessary for the operation of the procurement system. Therefore, not only the purchase prices have to be considered in procurement decisions, but also any other related costs. Higher logistics costs and higher transaction costs are the prices which have to be paid for realizing large arbitrages caused by lower labour costs. Accordingly, the efficiency of sourcing from Central and Eastern Europe crucially depends on the ability of the western procurement managers to recognize specific conditions and to shape appropriate procurement systems. Then logistics and transaction costs will be endurable.

This paper aims to contribute to the growing body of empirical evaluations of subjective wellbeing by assessing the impact of basic cultural values and beliefs on job satisfaction across 20 countries in Eastern and Western Europe.

Basic cultural values and beliefs are defined by reference to traditional vs secular values and survival vs self‐expression values, respectively. Data derived from the European Values Study 1999/2000 are utilised, which provide detailed information not only on job satisfaction and socio‐demographic characteristics, but also on individuals' subjective views on religion, family values, work, child‐parent ties, political engagement, tolerance and interpersonal trust. Ordered probit regressions are performed to determine the significance of these characteristics, values and beliefs on job satisfaction.

The study highlights the strong influence of a society's broad cultural heritage on individuals' wellbeing at work. This raises questions about the impetus for numerous motivational interventions by managers and consultants. Traditional cultural values exhibit a strong influence on workers' job satisfaction in Western Europe. Interpersonal trust serves as a particularly strong predictor of job satisfaction for both Eastern and Western Europe, and for both male and female workers. The main difference between Eastern and Western Europe is driven primarily by the importance of family and religion.

In previous studies, job satisfaction has been strongly associated with measures of organisational culture. In contrast, the broad cultural heritage of a society as measured by its basic value and belief system has not figured prominently in this literature. This paper adds value by contributing to this fledgling field of empirical research.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the banking systems in Western, and Central and Southeastern Europe, focusing on the interactive factors of anti‐money laundering, transitional economies and the underground illicit economy.

Provides a comparative analysis of the banking systems in Western, and Central and Southeastern Europe.

The transition economies of central and Southeastern Europe face, and have been confronted for over a generation by, the interlinked problems of the transition stage post‐1989, the alternative or illegal economy, and the vulnerability of banking systems to money laundering. In contrast, by the 1990s, Western European central banks have become established as an essential government organ in macro‐economic policies.

Suggests an interesting lesson that might be gained from the experiences of central and Southeastern Europe and anti‐money laundering since the late‐1990s, where a national bank or central bank has not been essential, indeed has been comparatively unimportant, compared to the developed banking system led by the individual banks.

The presented study pinpoints transformation of business models of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the food and beverage sector depending on their sustainability strategy. This paper makes a novel contribution to understanding various instruments of sustainability implementation in SMEs’ business models operating in the food and beverage industry of well-developed Western European countries versus less-developed Central–Eastern European countries.

The empirical basis is a survey of 770 European SMEs, of which 369 operate in Western European countries (including Great Britain, Germany and Spain) and 401 in Central and Eastern Europe (including Poland, Croatia and Russia). The nonparametric U Mann–Whitney test was used to examine the significance of the differences between the two groups of companies.

The study empirically confirmed that despite self-declared lack of skills and knowledge in managerial impacts of sustainability, it shapes business models of SME in both country groups in food and drink industry. At the same time, the motivation grounds for business models transformation toward sustainable models vary between mostly economic factors in Eastern Europe and social and cultural factors in Western Europe. The economic factor is formed due to smaller integration into social investments at the SME-level Eastern European countries, while Western European SMEs invest more in a variety of sustainability supporting instruments (R&D, new equipment).

This comparative study is the novel empirical research study on the implementation of sustainability into business models of food and beverage SMEs operating in two groups of Western and Central–Eastern European countries, which has not been previously observed in such a setting.

The study's objective is to measure the response of the food prices to the aggregate and disaggregate geopolitical risk events, Russia's geopolitical risks and global energy prices in the context of two European regions, i.e. Eastern and Western Europe covering the monthly data from January 2001 to March 2022.

The authors apply a novel and sophisticated econometric method, the cross-quantilogram (CQ) approach, to analyse the authors’ monthly data properties. This method detects the causal relationship between the variables under the bi-variate modelling approach. More importantly, the CQ procedure divulges the bearish and bullish states of the causal association between the variables under short, medium and long memories.

The authors find that aggregate measures of geopolitical risk reduce food prices in the short term in the Eastern Europe but increases food prices in the Western Europe. Besides, the decomposed measures of geopolitical risk “threats” and “acts” have heterogeneous effects on the food prices. More importantly, Russia's geopolitical risk events and global energy prices enhance the food inflation under long memory.

The authors provide diverse policy implications for Eastern and Western Europe based on the authors’ findings. First, the European policymakers should take concrete and joint policy measures to tackle the detrimental effects of geopolitical risks to bring stability to the food markets. Second, this region should emphasize utilizing their unused agricultural lands to grow more crops to avoid external dependence on food. Third, the European Union and its partners should begin global initiatives to help smallholder farmers because of their contribution to the resilience of disadvantaged, predominantly rural communities. Fourth, geopolitically affected European countries like Ukraine should deal with a crippled supply chain to safeguard their production infrastructure. Fifth, fuel (oil) scarcity in the European region due to the Russia-Ukraine war should be mitigated by searching for alternative sources (countries) for smooth food transportation for trade. Finally, as Europe and its Allies impose new sanctions in response to the Russia-Ukraine war, it can have immediate and long-run disastrous consequences on the European and the global total food systems. In this case, all European blocks mandate cultivating stratagems to safeguard food security and evade a long-run cataclysm with multitudinous geopolitical magnitudes for European countries and the rest of the world.

This is the maiden study that considers the aggregated and disaggregated measures of the geopolitical risk events, Russia's geopolitical risks and global energy prices and delves into these dynamics' effects on food prices. Notably, linking the context of the Russia-Ukraine war is a significant value addition to the existing piece of food literature.

Most food‐processing companies in the Western world which have international operations are considering the prospects for business development in Central and Eastern Europe, as previously established markets in the West stagnate or decline. The addition of 300 million people to the community of countries operating under Western market economy principles, following the political upheaval in the region in 1989, has been an important factor in this development. Considers the scope of opportunities in the new Europe; the opening up of new markets; new, if at present limited, spending power. Discusses market entry (costs are comparatively low) and further investment; acquisitions and joint ventures; issues to be addressed by any firm contemplating this market; and post‐entry issues. Concludes that Central and Eastern Europe can provide an attractive and enduring route for corporate grant.

The essays in this book are a study on how globalization, as one of the main driving forces in economics, international relations, and cultures, has affected politics in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. With the contributors paying particular attention to the changing nature of the interactions between various types of domestic institutions and international structures, this book attempts to interpret the process of economic, political, and cultural change in post-Cold War Central and Eastern Europe as it transformed from a relatively isolated corner of the world into a globally interconnected community with a European identity, based on democratic values and liberal markets. While Central and Eastern Europe entered and engaged so clearly, deeply, and rapidly in the multiple channels of globalization, there is a lacunae of reflections on this notable change, and only a few, often very specialized scholarly texts provide an account of how this region fared during this profound and multidimensional transformation. The analyses in this volume bridge this gap in a methodologically novel manner by combining the time-tested area-studies focus of various case-study countries and policies with the cross-disciplinary interpretations of the new theories of globalization.

Recent moves to democratisation of Eastern Europe, and aspirations to western lifestyles, do not guarantee easy penetration of western branded consumer goods. There is demand mainly for conspicuous tokens of capitalism (Levi′s, BMWs, Adidas). Barriers to developing markets for faster‐moving goods like food and drink include limited resources, primitive distribution systems and adequate basic foodstuffs.

This chapter investigates the awareness and level of implementation of the sustainability marketing concept in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in selected Western European and Central-Eastern European countries. This study will focus primarily on comparing the Western and Central-Eastern European countries combined in respective country groups. The data underlying this evaluation were gathered as part of an international research project by surveying SME managers in six European countries. The chapter will assess whether the main hypothesis of the research project – that there is a significant positive correlation between awareness and level of implementation of the sustainability marketing concept and a country’s level of socio-economic development – is accurate. The main hypothesis will be verified based on individual sub-hypotheses. The findings from this verification process will clearly reveal that the main hypothesis is applicable. The following chapter is organized as follows. First, managers’ attitudes towards sustainability marketing are described. Second, managers’ knowledge on the concept of sustainability marketing is presented. The final part focuses on the implementation of sustainability marketing concept and the significance of sustainability marketing for corporate strategy over time.

Formation of a single market within the EU and democratisation and development of a market economy in Eastern Europe undoubtedly enhance standardisation of marketing in the European area. Multinational companies planning to enter the Eastern European market frequently assume that this region is culturally and economically undifferentiated. The purpose of the study is to analyze whether the purchasing and consumption behaviour of Slovene consumers is similar to that of consumers from other Eastern European countries. The attention is focused on the following five dimensions: orientation towards domestic brands versus Western brands, experimentation with unknown brands and new products; brand loyalty; quality orientation and quality indicators; and price sensitivity.