Abstract (eng)
This thesis aims to investigate what determines an international strategy in case of Austrian companies with presence in the CEE region. Drawing from contingency theory, both internal and external factors have an influence on international strategies and therefore a conceptual framework model is created in order to test the independent variables. The empirical objective is to find the impact between the factors of firm context and host country context on the level of adaptation within a sample of 167 Austrian companies with subsidiaries in the CEE. The data for the empirical project was obtained by Advantage Austria, where 969 questionnaires were sent.
The firm context factors include firm size and international experience. The host country context factors consist of cultural differences, institutional uncertainty, market uncertainty, and the level of competition. Moreover, the statistical tools used in this thesis are factor analysis and regression analysis. The findings of the regression rounds support partially those of the literature review. However, statistical significance between independent and dependent variables is rare the case. In the main regression round, international experience and market uncertainty show to have an impact on the level of adaptation. The other remaining hypotheses are not statistically significant.