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The end of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the choice for a market economy and democracy by these societies was the beginning of a vast process of change that affected all aspects of social life. In spite of the simultaneity of these changes, and the general realisation that integrative approaches are needed to do justice to this complexity, most scholarly analyses remain confined within existing disciplinary boundaries such as Economics and Politics. In this thesis, reflexive theories in Economics, Politics and International Political Economy are used to derive a set of working hypotheses about the relationships between the economic and political spheres, domestic and international. These hypotheses are then used to illuminate the empirical case of marketisation in Romania. The dominant neo-Iiberal explanations about the meaning and direction of postcommunist changes created a hierarchy of performance (i.e. conformity with the neoliberal ideals) between the countries of CEE. In this reading, Romania was a laggard in 'transition' and this was attributed to the incomplete democratisation of the political system and the neo-comrnunist and nationalistic ideology of the 1990-6 governments. The analysis proposed in this thesis challenges this simplistic explanation and the content and pace of economic reforms in Romania are linked to four factors. These are the fragile political consensus around reform; the structural power of industrial interests and their ability to co-opt factions of the political elite; the weak institutional basis; and the cultural gap between the expectations of the public and the requirements of a market economy.

The demands of managing in an international operating environment have changed considerably over the past 20 years due to developments in global markets. Multinational enterprises face fierce international competition and are now tasked not only with developing effective competitive capabilities but also with maximising the knowledge and expertise developed in one part of the organisation by transferring it to another. This work has investigated the position of multinational enterprises in the developing global market and through a broad and thorough review of current literature, identified a gap in the knowledge -a tool for helping the assessment of the transfer of technology prior to the transfer process taking place. Using existing models as a foundation, a new framework has been developed with observations from three case study organisations and the incorporation of other relevant literature. To -make use of the new framework to practitioners it leas been used as the basis of a workbook by which the anticipated difficulties can be judged and a priority focus developed. Validation of the 'r ework has been carried out by a panel of industrialists and academics experienced in international technology transfer. The thesis concludes with a series of recommendations for further work. The originality of this work lies in the development by the author of the new pre-transfer assessment Framework. This should provide clear advantages over previous approaches and give way to improving the success of technology transfer projects.

This thesis presents a two-stage economic and policy analysis of the impact of European Union (EU) accession upon crude oil production and transportation policy in Lithuania. The first stage provides the theoretical framework for the research. The analysis begins with the overview of the Russian oil industry, as for over 50 years Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union and thus its oil industry was largely controlled by Russian interests. Although Lithuania became independent in 1991, the dependency on Russia in terms of energy remains until today. The following chapters introduce Lithuania's development since its independence, outline the relationship with the EU and present Lithuania's intentions to become a member of the European Union. More specific issues discussed include the interdependence between Russia and the European Union in terms of crude oil and natural gas supplies and the impact of this phenomenon upon the Lithuanian oil industry. Particular emphasis is placed upon the political significance of oil in Lithuania including the ramifications of the sale of the state-owned oil transit and refining interest to USA investors and the consequences in terms of reaction from Russian crude oil suppliers. The second stage centers upon two techniques - content analysis and a scaling approach. The former was used to derive a set of the important issues within the Lithuanian oil industry, whilst the latter employed these issues in order to construct a scale for assessing the opinion of the industry's leading experts. The results of the Likert scale questionnaire were analyzed using a number of techniques and this identified a series of policies relating to crude oil and oil production in Lithuania. These policies take into account the experts' opinion, the process of EU accession and the politico-economic context of the research period, which places particular emphasis on relations between Lithuania and Russia. The final part of this thesis concludes the analysis, presents the implications as well as provides a number of suggestions for further research possibilities in this field.

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