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This paper introduces the readers to Neo-Transitional Economics – a volume which aspires to reinvigorate scholarly interest in transition economics research. The classical transition storyline is briefly revisited, and new directions for empirical and policy-relevant research that target post-transition economies in the post-crisis paradigm are highlighted.

Attempts to discover an internal logic in the high‐speed events taking place in the former Soviet Union. In addressing the problems of the country′s disintegration, examines the issue in its socioeconomic, political and territorial‐administrative aspects. Analyses, for this purpose, the nature of Soviet society prior to Gorbachev′s reforms, its present transitional stage and its probable direction in the near future.

Transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies is a fairly new concept with respect to new ventures in such challenging economic environments. Formal institutional voids are sometimes held up as a reason for the difficulties present in distressed economies, along with exogenous shocks and other upheavals. In this research, the authors seek to contribute empirically and theoretically as to ways in which formal institutions voids can be filled by a culture developed by transitional entrepreneurs. Indeed, in transition economies, formal institutions need to be enhanced by informal institutions to control corruption and other misbehavior by authorities. Iranian economists emphasize these essential reforms to be able to manage current difficulties, yet top down policies cannot help transitional entrepreneurs benefit from the country’s value-adding cultural heritage to informally address this. To study this, qualitative research methods were used to interpret transitional entrepreneurs’ ideology and ethical routines as the ingredients of a commercial culture that can establish soft law that substitutes for formal institutions. This helps to reduce the disfunctionality of formal institutions in distressed economies.

A thematic analysis interviewing key Iranian entrepreneurs and economists is conducted. Also based on an interpretive paradigm, a hermeneutic cycle has been carried out on selected texts. Results have been verified throughout related literature as to come up with a solid synthesized interpreted outcome.

This paper contributes to theory from a new perspective by discussing transitional entrepreneurship and navigating a distressed economy; in which, ideology and ethics as the ingredients of soft law (Newman and Posner, 2018) are discussed as the base to further develop a commercial culture that fills voids of formal institutions. The formal–informal institutional cycle in distressed economies as the major difficulty entrepreneurs face (Peng and Luo, 2000) is important, because they try to increasingly enhance their move toward a market orientation (Bruton et al., 2008). The authors contribute as to how transitional entrepreneurs can complete this process of adaptation and also the fact that those informal institutions do actually respond to those adaptations. The other contribution is to enrich theories about institutions from the point of view of culture. Knowing these facts helps transitional entrepreneurs, because in distressed communities, formal institutions’ function has an important effect on economic performance (Amorós, 2009). This research’s contributions shed light to help government leaders understand the pros and cons of their actions forced on the industry. As it has been characterized in this research, it can turn in to new formal set of legitimacies (Ahlstrom et al., 2008) to root out corruption and help set the economy on a path to innovation and new venture creation.

Transitional entrepreneurs can depend on the less formal cultural-cognitive aspect of ethics and ideology. These entrepreneurs can be working on the burgeoning private sector, who want to connect with the outside effectively to overcome an economy in distress. Transitional entrepreneurs may face governmental institutional intermediaries as a barrier. Formal intermediaries tend to benefit from inefficiencies caused by hierarchal orders and will improve informality in order to overcome difficulties. In this research, institutional theory from the third pillar of the cultural-cognitive sheds light on transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies, where inquiry is to fill voids of formal institutions as a process of possible linking between new generated soft law derived by beliefs, ideology and professional morality in order to influence (old) legitimacies. The research’s focus evolves on values transitional entrepreneurs utilize to build informal institutions and then impact further on formal institutions to handle distressed communities. This theoretical background expands on subsections to define conceptual building blocks for the study, essential aspects such as individuals as transitional entrepreneurs, the values they utilize to generate soft law, informal institutions and soft law, to manage voids in formal institutions and legitimacy building aspects in policy agenda setting for transitional entrepreneurship in distressed economies.

A distinguished authority on methodology in the social sciences has written: “We are using models, willingly or not, whenever we are trying to think systematically about anything at all.”² As used here, a model refers to any “structure of symbols and operating rules” which we think has a counterpart in the real world. A circle, for example, may be used as a model to characterize the shape of a bowl or a crown. Governments are often described in terms of a model of the family, the ruler being likened to a father, the people to children. In one sense, a model is simply an elaborated simile or paradigm.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational climate impacts the speed of strategic change (SSC) for firms in transitional economies and whether if the effects were contingent on internal control mechanisms.

A theoretical model including five constructs is developed. The questionnaire survey is deployed to scale main constructs, including organizational climate, such as open communication and hierarchical bureaucracy, internal controls such as strategic and financial control, and SSC. The moderation regression method in five steps is employed to test all hypotheses using the survey data from the 120 sampled Chinese firms.

The findings show that open communication has a positive effect on SCC, whereas hierarchical bureaucracy has a negative effect on SSC. Furthermore, strategic control positively moderates the relationship between open communication and SSC but negatively moderates the relationship between hierarchical bureaucracy and SSC; meanwhile, financial control negatively moderates the relationship between open communication and SSC but positively moderates the relationship between hierarchical bureaucracy and SSC.

This research integrates organizational climate and internal control mechanisms into the framework of strategic change to investigate how firms achieve fast strategic change through aligning organizational climate with proper organizational control mechanisms. The findings advance the authors’ understanding of the organizational climate, internal controls, and strategic change literature, and offer valuable managerial insights for managers in situations when strategic change is of central importance in the transitional economies.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate antecedents and results of strategic choices of multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries in Croatia economy. Hence, the authors examined knowledge management and its association with performance. Additionally, they explored which of the strategies will be most likely chosen by subsidiaries in transitional economies that are characterized by market volatility and uncertainty.

Data were collected from a survey of 131 MNC subsidiaries operating in Croatia. To test the theoretical correlation between knowledge management capabilities and strategic orientation, the authors used the ANCOVA method and controlled for industry, years in international business and firm size.

The results pointed out the recognized necessities for a specific alignment between environment, strategy and knowledge management capabilities. The findings also suggest that there is a positive relationship between knowledge management and performance.

As with most of the research, this paper has limitations. First, all data were collected using self-report surveys raising the possibility of response set biases. Additionally, all data were collected at one point in one country specifically in Croatia.

Clearly, there is substantial interaction between the MNC subsidiary’s environment and the MNC subsidiary’s strategic orientation. Most notably, the environment studied here was at the competitive and consumer market level. Firms need to develop a strategic plan for knowledge management based upon the local environmental influences.

Other firms from Central and Eastern European and developed countries may compare their own environment, strategy and knowledge management practices in MNCs with findings from Croatia to be aware of similarities and market differences.

The strategic employment of knowledge acquisition, conversion and application are examined across firms using the Prospector, Analyzer, Defender and Reactor strategic orientations.

The purpose of this second part of this special issue is to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of Soviet society. It is not possible to analyse such a society in all its complexities within the space of one study. There are, however, some economic relations which determine society's major features. We believe that commodity‐production relations in the Soviet Union are of this type.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between organizational slack, environmental characteristics, and new venture performance in China. The paper focuses on how different types of organizational slack, such as absorbed slack and unabsorbed slack, impact Chinese new venture performance. And it also examines the moderating effects of environmental characteristics, such as munificence and dynamism, on the slack‐performance linkage in Chinese transitional context.

A literature review on organizational slack and institutional environment characteristics provides the model and hypothesis. Using a sample of 91 Chinese new ventures, the authors conduct the examination on the theoretical model and hypotheses.

The results show that the relationship between absorbed slack and new venture performance is negative and unabsorbed slack has an inverse U‐shaped effect on new venture performance. Furthermore, the institutional environments, such as munificence and dynamism in transitional economies have different moderating effects on the relationship between organizational slack and new venture performance.

This study focuses on the new ventures of China, which is context specific. It is necessary to replicate this research in other transitional economies because of some specific differences between China and other transitional economies.

The results of the study suggest that new ventures should strengthen the management of resources and decrease absorbed slack in order to reduce the managerial cost, and then raise the level of resource utilization. In addition, how the new ventures make better utilization of organizational slack to deal with institutional environment uncertainty would be a core task in future business operations.

The paper is original in its investigation of the effect of organizational slack on new venture performance in contingent transitional environments. The paper explains the relationship between different types of organizational slack and new venture performance from a contingent perspective, thus extending the extant research.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the issues and variables that influence the bureaucracy’s role and work in the transitional period, which is known with its complexity, uncertainty, instability, ambiguity and asymmetry. This paper highlights the transition from theoretical perspective, giving examples from the Polish experience in transition.

This paper describes the changing roles of public bureaucracies in transitional periods by highlighting their ecology with the transitional period and analyzing the determinants of bureaucracy’s role and functions in terms of participation in policy-making policies, providing consultations to executives and elected officials, working as a mediator in communication and acting as an active participant in the development process giving examples from Poland. Finally, it highlights the way the bureaucracy manages its functions and the internal and external variables that constitute various levels affecting this role in the transition.

Bureaucracy is supposed to function naturally and stably in an unstable environment (transition) as its success in doing these functions and helping the new regime to exceed the transition and achieve its goals depends on many variables (bureaucracy capabilities and skills, history, power, experience, the nature of politics and bureaucratic functions, political support, policy environment, knowledge, cohesion, etc.). Most of these variables were demonstrative in the case of Poland.

This paper will be useful for scholars and policymakers interested in public administration role in the time of transition, especially countries that recently have been experiencing the transition.

This paper discusses the institutionalists' economic thought and how they saw the role of property rights in economic development. It points out that the role of various institutions in the economic performance of many developing countries cannot be ignored. One of the important institutional factors in many developing countries and transitional economies is the nature and definition of property rights. This paper therefore addresses the impact of property rights on overall economic performance of a country and more specifically on agricultural production and on the conservation and management of the environment. It is generally agreed that property rights are a claim to a benefit stream where the state provides protection from others who may interfere with the benefit stream. Well‐defined property rights are considered vital for transitional economies which are undertaking major structural changes. The recent literature on property rights in transitional economies is largely concentrated on the former socialist and communist economies of Eastern Europe, which are embracing the market economy. However, this also has significant implications for many developing countries like Fiji which can also be considered as transitional economies. For Fiji the transition is from a highly protected, inward‐looking economy towards an export‐oriented economy. Getting the property rights “right” seems to be one of the major obstacles to economic reform agendas for many of the South Pacific countries including Fiji.