Business perceptions of regulative institutions in Central and Eastern Europe

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate, theoretically and empirically how entrepreneurial firms perceptions of formal institutions differ across Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies Design/methodology/approach - The paper uses data from the World Bank Group's World Business Environment Survey (WBES) compare entrepreneurial firms perceptions of changes in different components of regulative institutions in Latin and orthodox CEE economies The data used in this paper capture a decade's progress in the development of regulative institutions in these economies Findings - It was found that the state s regulatory participatory, and supportive roles are more favorable to businesses in the Latin countries than in the orthodox countries The findings provide support for the notion that informal institutions influence the degree of generalizeability and replicability of Western political and economic institutions' success in driving firms' entrepreneurial behavior in emerging economies Research limitations/implications - The first limitation is that the data used were collected about a decade ago Another limitation relates to a lack of coverage of many former Soviet republics and some other CEE countries in the WBES Practical implications - The findings point to the need of strategic planning and various degrees of adaptation of business strategies across the CEE economies Second businesses may differ in terms of the relative importance of regulatory, participatory and supportive roles of the government in their operations Finally some CEE economies can be influenced more than others by international pressures Originality/value - This paper's greatest value stems from the fact that it uses internationally comparable firm level data to empirically examine entrepreneurial firms' perceptions of regulative institutions m CEE economies