Globalizing Firms in an Anti-Global Age

In today’s world, the word “globalization” often carries an undertone of fragility. Supply chains falter under geopolitical tension; industries retreat behind national borders. Yet a century ago, when Europe was still reeling from war and protectionist tariffs were the norm, and when populist ideologies turned against globalization, two companies from Central Europe defied economic gravity.

A new study within the ERC-funded project SpoilsofWAR led by Tamás Vonyó (Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University; Dondena Centre) and co-authored with Mária Hidvégi (Dondena Centre, Bocconi University), and Milan Balaban (Tomas Bata University, Czech Republic) revisits this paradox. Their article, “Survival through globalisation: Innovation, internationalisation, and the endurance of big business in Central Europe”, published in October 2025 in Business History, explores how Bata of Czechoslovakia and Tungsram of Hungary harnessed protectionism, rather than succumbed to it, to become enduring international players.

“Economic nationalism and international market fragmentation… were not detrimental to the global expansion of businesses if these structural conditions were accounted for in their business strategies,” the authors write. It’s a lesson with striking modern echoes.

Factories of modernity

The years between the two world wars were an era of intense industrial reinvention. Both Bata and Tungsram emerged from a region of relative backwardness, where industrialization was delayed, integration with the global economy was limited, and modern nation states emerged only after 1918 on the ruins of the Habsburg Empire. Yet both companies became pioneers of organizational and technological modernity.

Bata, the footwear empire founded by Tomáš Baťa in Zlín, built what historians have called “industrial utopias”: factory towns with worker housing, schools, and community facilities, all designed around efficiency and loyalty. The “Bata system” created vertically integrated production sites across the world operating as self-sufficient “quasi-national” factories supported by national sales networks. 

Tungsram, by contrast, illuminated Europe—literally. The Budapest-based light bulb manufacturer invested heavily in research and development, forming technical partnerships with giants like Western Electric and Philips. Its laboratories turned Hungary into a hub of electrical innovation, while its membership in international cartels opened the doors to global markets in electrotechnical instruments. 

Vonyó and his co-authors argue that both firms succeeded not by escaping the constraints of rising economic nationalism, but by working within them. Protectionist tariffs and export controls became incentives to innovate locally, refine production methods, and create independent innovation capacities.

Globalization as a survival strategy

When the Second World War and the Iron Curtain divided the world, most companies of similar scale in Central Europe disappeared from world markets. The success of Bata and Tungsram endured—albeit through dramatically different paths.

Bata’s family network reorganized the firm abroad, replicating its production philosophy from Britain to Canada and India. Its “factory town” model, honed in Czechoslovakia, became a blueprint for global franchising long before the term existed. In the early 1980s, “the Bata Shoe Organisation became the world’s largest shoe manufacturer … producing a quarter billion pairs in a hundred factories with almost ninety thousand workers.”

Tungsram became a state enterprise in communist Hungary but formally remained a joint-stock company and defied the odds of Cold War isolation to rebuild its global market presence. Its expertise in electrotechnical and lighting technology made it one of Hungary’s most export-oriented firms by the 1970s, using differentiated strategies to expand in socialist, western, and third world markets.

For both firms, the paper argues, resilience was a matter of managerial vision more than ownership structure. “In the face of globalisation backlash, inspirational and forward-looking managers… were a more vital factor in internationalisation than ownership."

This insight challenges a persistent assumption in international business studies: that family firms, state enterprises, and multinationals represent distinct—and often incompatible—modes of globalization. Vonyó and his conclude that innovative capabilities and entrepreneurial creativity, rather than organization form, were the decisive ingredient of global success.

The local origins of global thinking

What makes this story remarkable is not only that it rewrites a chapter of Central European industrial history, but also that it reframes our understanding of globalization itself.

Bata and Tungsram were global before globalization, precisely because they were deeply rooted in local realities. Their international expansion was not about escaping regulation or chasing cheap labor, but about exporting systems of production and innovation.

When trade barriers tightened, Bata built shoe factories abroad to complement exports of finished goods—a precursor to modern multinational strategies. Tungsram, operating under international license and cartel agreements, used technology exchange as a pathway to staying competitive. In the Cold War era, it exported these technological capabilities to the third world to enter emerging markets. 

In short, both companies transformed economic nationalism into a developmental engine.

Echoes in the twenty-first century

The relevance of these findings goes far beyond the history of Central Europe. Today, businesses face a similar crossroads: reshoring production, diversifying supply chains, and adapting to rising geopolitical risk.

In this light, the research by Tamás Vonyó and his colleagues reads almost like a manual for resilient globalization. Firms that integrate technological innovation with strategic local engagement—those that see national frameworks not as cages but as catalysts—may find themselves better equipped for turbulent times.

The enduring success of Bata and Tungsram suggests that globalization is not a linear process of liberalization, but a cycle of adaptation. Economic nationalism, paradoxically, can sometimes lay the groundwork for a more sustainable global reach.

History as a guide to the future

By tracing a century of transformation through two companies, the paper offers more than a historical case study—it provides a mirror for the present. As industries once again grapple with fragmentation and political headwinds, the lesson from Bata and Tungsram feels both timely and timeless: innovation thrives not in spite of barriers, but often because of them.

Balaban, M., Hidvégi, M. e Vonyó, T. (2025), “Survival through globalisation: Innovation, internationalisation, and the endurance of big business in Central Europe”, Business History, 1-26. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2025.2566483