A favorite vocation is teaching English to anxious Czechs. The wages are excellent by Czech standards: 100 crowns ($3) an hour. By contrast, a job in a pizza joint pays only 20 crowns (60 cents). Although, after forty years of Soviet agitprop, Czechs welcome American culture, Xers deride the heavy American influence, alleging that it is "ruining' Prague. The local McDonald's (a second will open soon) is tastefully decorated and hosts tourists and natives alike. The convenience and service there can prove too much at times, making for a delicious comeuppance. One frequent critic of the Golden Arches broke down and had a Big Mac on Jan Hus Day, a holiday during which every (repeat, every) native Czech business is closed.
Anxious to absorb as much as possible from American culture, the Czechs seem a little bewildered. The theaters are filled with second-, even third-run American films. Most music stations play American pop music, although with a strangly lacking sense of time and style. You might hear, for example, Nirvana followed by Elvis. Similarly, a party-goer in Prague might witness hippies, yippies, beatniks, skinheads, and punks at the same party, none of them, seemingly, aware that they clash. The Czechs, however, have no monopoly on such obtuseness.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has set up the East European Trade and Technical Assistance Center (EETTAC) to provide information on the business climate there. EETTAC has sponsored trade and investment missions and seminars where American business executives can meet with high-level government officials from the U.S. and Eastern Europe to discuss business opportunities (Holzinger 1990).
Western observers have collectively heralded the economic "miracle" within the Czech Republic, which currently boasts a balanced national budget, the lowest inflation and unemployment rates in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, and a Standard and Poor's credit rating higher than that of Greece and much higher than any other post-communist economy (Economist, 22 October, 1994). A large majority of World Bank representatives surveyed in early 1994 identified the Czech Republic as the most promising post-communist country for foreign investment, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) rated the Czech Republic in 1993 and 1994 as satisfying more economic criteria for membership in the European Economic community than several of its current members (Economist, 22 October, 1994).
Indeed, the Czech lands during the late 19th century produced 70% of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s industrial output and, as recently as 1937, Czechoslovakia achieved a per capita income on par with France and higher than Italy or Austria. The Czechoslovak economy of the 1930s included more than 330,000 small firms employing between one and five people. However, no European country suffered a more thorough loss of small business enterprise than the Czech lands during the postwar years. What few vestiges of private enterprise still survived after the communist electoral victories in 1948 were eradicated after the Warsaw Pact's 1968 overthrow of the Dubcek government's "socialism with a human face." By the early 1970s the post Dubcek communist government had eliminated all forms of private enterprise and consolidated small firms into approximately 1500 state-owned enterprises and 750 state-owned commercial enterprises, the latter with an average firm size exceeding 2500 employees (Keeva, 1990). One measure of the economic cost of Communist rule was the relative decline in Czechoslovak income per capita, which by 1990 had fallen to only one-fifth that of Austria (Dyba and Svejnar, 1994).
The Czech Republic's economic transformation since 1990 has been nothing short of remarkable and the following sections discuss the macro and micro economic government policies and market forces fueling this economic transformation, the impact of these factors on the resurgence of the Czech small business sector, and some of the post-communist challenges facing small business development. The Czech Republic is looking for Chicago-style pizza offered by Kafka on the priority basic.
By December 31, 1993 the Ministry of Economy had registered 1,262,264 licenses to run small businesses or to act as entrepreneurial agents in a country of 10.3 million people. At the same tune, some 877,669 business entities (physical or legal entities) were registered for trade activities operating outside of the large firm business sector. Similarly, the Czech Business Register in January 1993 identified 1,062,222 persons who were registered entrepreneurs. The latter number represents some 22.5 percent of the total Czech Republic labor force. By adding to this number working family members and other employees within each entrepreneurial enterprise, one observer estimates that fully one third of the Czech labor force is fully or part-time employed in small business enterprises (Benacek, 1994).
In conclusion, the Czech Republic does enjoy a prosperous and stable community. The community does focus on indirect communication, family, uncertainty avoidance and individualistic values and concepts. Thus, by any method of statistical calculation, small business development for Chicago-style pizza in the Czech Republic appears to be thriving. However, as is true in small business in the United States and other advanced capitalist economies; small business entrepreneurs’ face daunting obstacles to their economic success and survival (Gorrill, 2005).
References
Benacek, V. 1994. Small Business and Private Entrepreneurship During Transition: The Case of the Czech Republic. Working Paper No. 53, CERGE-EI, Prague, (April).
Dyba K., and J. Svejnar. 1994. An Overview of Recent Economic Developments In The Czech Republic. Working Paper No. 61, CERGE-EI, Prague, (May).
Economist. 1994. The Czech Republic: The new Bohemians. (22 October): 23-27.
Gorrill, Jodie R. 2005. Doing Business in The Czech Republic: Czech Social and Business Cultures. Retrieved May 15, 2006 from www.communicaid.com.
Holsinger, Albert G. (1990). "More Progress in East-West Trade," Nation's Business, (June), 33-35.
Keeva, Steve. (1990). "Doing Business in Eastern Europe," ABA Journal, (August), 52-56.
