Includes bibliographyAbstract  When an economy goes through a transition from a closed to an     open market economy, the agents that operate in it face a need to reconsider     their position in the business environment and productive function. To function,     organisations require resources they do not always have at their disposal. This     scarcity makes that organisations interact with each other and exert influence     to obtain the resources they need. Organisations, thus, are connected through     dependence relations that, at the meso-level of analysis, make up a constellation     of suppliers, intermediate firms, distributors/clients, public agencies and     financiers.    The restructuring of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to a context of market     openness is conditioned more by rsource-constraints and perception and processing     of information than that of their larger counterparts. As a result, their efficient     boundary choices are influenced by how surrounding players restructure, while     the restructuring process itself -from a meso-level perspective- can be interpreted     as a bargaining process. To be able to restructure or, differently, to change     their dependence relations, firms make use of th latitude as comprised in the     relations that constitute the meso-level framework to which -in a context in     transition- the impact of the opening of markets on the established governance     structures should be added. This thesis shows that SMEs that held a comparatively     strong bargaining position at the outset of the trasition were better able to     restructure successfully than their weaker counterparts. The impact of the transition     did not prove to icrease firms' latitude directly but needs to be taken in account     to come to a more complete understanding of SMEs' restructuring processes