Creating Cultural Changein a Swedish-HungarianJoint Venture

The joint venture(JV) Larsson Technika between Swedish multinational Larsson and Hungarian company Nagy Technika signed in 1990 was the culmination of a long, historical involvement in Hungary. Larsson has been present in the Hungarian market since 1911. The JV was meant to be long term and both foreign and local partners seemed to have similar goals and to believe strongly in the long term benefits and positive future of the company. The idea was to combine Hungarian experience and creativity with the Swedeish top-level technology to achieve bold goals within short period of time.
It seems that this JV was very succesful. Employees were very positive about past achievements and had very high confidence in the future. The family-like environment was supportive and friendly. The company was using a large number of benefits showing that it cared about employeess. The strong technical expertise was gradually transferred to the JV and everything seemed to be all right but there were so...