Success factors in the adaptation process of East German companies

Even though the adaptation process of privatized, industrial companies in East Germany seems to have proceeded along a characteristic threephase pattern, this does not mean, that all of these companies have developed in a fully uniform way after 1990. On the contrary, even in the adaptation processes of the seven companies which have been analyzed in more detail in this book diverse differences have emerged. In a study conducted in 1998 Laschke shows that such differences are thoroughly typical of industrial companies in East Germany. In her study Laschke classified 257 East German companies according to the point in time at which they broke even and according to the development of their revenues and employee figures. She found four fairly equal clusters, which she named ‘winners’, ‘rising stars’, ‘latecomers’ and ‘losers’. The first cluster – that of the ‘winners’ – consisted of companies which had become profitable by 1993 already and since then had achieved considerable revenue increases. The second cluster – that of the ‘rising stars’ – comprised companies which had broken even until 1995 and which had experienced increasing revenues from that year on. In 1997, however, these companies had faced a stagnation in growth. Companies in the third cluster, the cluster of the ‘latecomers’, had managed to break even until 1997.