Between closure and Industry 4.0: strategies of Japanese automotive manufacturers in Central and Eastern Europe in reaction to labour market changes

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has been an important production base for the international automotive industry, attracting foreign direct investments from European, American, and Japanese car manufacturers. However, after almost three decades of transformation, local changes such as rapidly rising wages and decreasing unemployment have forced investors to re-consider their original plans. This article identifies a range of strategies employed by Japanese automakers in order to cope with the challenges of labour markets in CEE. In our study, we learn that investments that have primarily been motivated by lowering costs were forced to close down, while the remaining ones developed a variety of strategies for securing, retaining, and upskilling of employees. The discussion section in this paper focuses on the future perspective of the industry in the region, considering the high-road and low-road labour models as well as the influence of the Industry 4.0.