Effects of Substantial Operating Environment Changes on Mode of International Operations‪.‬

INTRODUCTION In the course of Finnish history, the forest industry is the one single industry on which the development and prosperity of Finnish society has relied the most. This has led to the prevailing situation in which Finnish society and the sentiment of the nation has taken the forest industry as "its own", something to take care of and nurture. It is the generally held view in Finland that the interests of the Finnish forest industry and of the Finnish state converge. This belief, in fact, can be accounted for by the fact that Finland is, of all industrialized countries, the one that depends on its forest industry exports the most (Raumolin, 1990). Compared with other major forest-industry product exporters such as Canada, which is the largest exporter, and Sweden, which is the fourth largest exporter, of the total exports in Finland, the share of forest industry products is some fifteen percentage units higher (Finnish Forest Industries Federation, 1999). This heavy forest industry dependency of Finland makes the development paths of Finnish companies worthy of study.