Multinationals from Slovenia — Nano Size, but Giga Important

Creation of multinational enterprises (MNEs) seems an inevitable phenomenon of development, and their existence speeds up changes. Also emerging and many transition economies have increasingly invested abroad. New MNEs have emerged. Since communist and socialist regimes frequently hampered MNEs (interpreting the creation of domestic MNEs as an adverse export of capital needed at home and foreign MNEs as a synonym for the large exploiting enterprises from Western industrialized countries), many found the process of internationalization in these economies as surprisingly quick. Yet the case of Slovenia shows that escaping from the system may itself serve as a strong incentive for direct investment abroad (Svetlicic, Rojec, and Lebar, 1994; Jaklic and Svetlicic, 2003). Firm-level, bottom-up initiatives were taken after the change of the system, slowly accompanied by economic policy and also influenced by changes in the global environment. The speed of emergence in some economies has thus challenged traditional theories and patterns of internationalization as well as existing knowledge on changes and developments brought about by their existence (Dunning et al., 2008; Rugman, 2008).