This dissertation focuses on the development of foreign direct investment realized by Czech companies during the last two decades. The Czech Republic became one of the targets of foreign investors during its economic transformation while inward investments have all this time exceeded outward investments. This is probably the reason why Czech outward foreign direct investments do not attract such attention in economic research as inward investments. This dissertation tries to extend findings on the influences on the development of Czech outward foreign direct investments, describes who the main Czech investors abroad are and examines the microeconomic and macroeconomic impacts of foreign direct investments. Last but not least, application of the Investment Development Path theoretical concept was used in order to describe Czech outward foreign direct investment in the globalising world economy.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has grown exponentially in the recent past and has become one of the most important measures of globalisation. Today, Information and communication technologies (ICT) are viewed as one of the necessary conditions for the globalisation of business activities. ICT is also seen as a general purpose utility in many developed countries. Additionally, in many developing and so called emerging economies, there have been significant investments in ICT. Very recent studies show that the adoption and investment in ICT leads to economic growth and productivity gains at a macro-level. However, the link between ICT and FDI needs further exploration, especially in least developed and developing countries. This study aims to shed more light on internal factors that might explain the behaviour of FDI in emerging and developing economies and to understand if ICT capabilities of economies play a significant factor in foreign direct investments. The results from the study show that there is indeed a relationship between ICT and FDI in developing and developed countries; however, this relationship is not significant in least developed countries. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

The thesis analyses the investment development path (IDP) of CEE countries and discusses their movement to its later stages, which is conditioned by in- crease in outward foreign direct investment (FDI). Providing evidence on data until 2012, it enables to test the impact of global financial crisis on the validity of IDP and the stages reached by particular CEE countries. Moreover, the thesis explores the effect of inward reinvestment of earnings on the ability to move to later stages through the relationship with outward FDI, which has not been tested in the literature yet. The thesis on a cross-sectional basis shows that: a) CEE countries follow IDP; however, when using subsamples, it holds only for more developed ones; b) contrary to literature before crisis, CEE countries did not reach the third stage of IDP, which suggests that crisis could have caused movement back along their IDP; c) reinvestment of earnings positively influ- ences outward FDI. According to the latter, countries with high reinvestment of earnings and inward FDI stock are identified and is concluded that they are likely to enter the third stage of IDP. However, further research is needed as also other determinants are relevant for outward FDI, not only reinvestment of earnings.

The thesis provides information on rarely discussed issues -Czech outward foreign direct investments. The theoretical parts contains a brief overview of major theories and methodology of outward internationalization processes. The main hypothesis that deals with this issue is so called "investment development path" paradigm (IDP). This model explains why countries at a lower development stage first host foreign direct investments and why and when they start investing abroad. The practical part concentrates mainly on history, trends and role determining outward foreing direct investments of Czech enterprises. The major source for the analyses in this part is based on Czech National Bank data, Czech Statistical Office data and relevant scientific researches. This part also describes investment strategy of Czech companies - ČEZ a.s, Zentiva N.V. and Škoda-Auto a.s.The last chapter is engaged in applying IDP theory on case of Czech Republic.