“…The term transitional periphery of the EU was coined by sociologists and economists a decade ago (see e.g. Totev, 2002;Barry, 2004;Galego et al, 2004;Balkir et al, 2013) and includes countries located in territories bordering core EU economies in the SEE region as well as ex-soviet states that are members of CIS (Demekas et al, 2005(Demekas et al, , 2007Aslund, 2012;Uvalic, 2013, 2014). These economies are generally characterized by significant challenges for investing foreign MNEs, such as macroeconomics and political instability, problematic legal systems, official corruption, crime and mafia, lack of information about market conditions and uncertainty, and lack of a business culture by local employees and local partners (Demekas et al, 2005(Demekas et al, , 2007Bitzenis, 2009;Uvalic, 2013, 2014).…”