Co-ordination and public administration in a global economy — A Hungarian point of view

The purpose of social co-ordination mechanisms is to co-ordinate the activities of individuals and organisations specialised in the distribution of work. The paper reviews five basic types of mechanisms: market, bureaucratic, ethical, aggressive and co-operative co-ordination. Today’s world operates on the basis of a duality: international cooperation is based on nation states, in which the public administrations work according to bureaucratic coordination. However, the increasingly globalised market responds to the logic of market coordination. The article argues that in terms of understanding the working of public administration, the various coordination mechanisms are of crucial importance, especially where various mechanisms meet, such as the relationship between nation states and multinational corporations.

Happiness, environmental protection and market economy

The manufacturing sector is leaving the West for Asia’s low wages and good working culture. Europe would be better off keeping these manufacturing activities, slowing down wage inflation and what is more, letting a young, cheaper workforce from the East settle down within their borders. This would aid in preserving the diverse economic structure which has been characteristic for Europe.Beside the economic growth there are two more concepts which have turned into the “holy cows” of economics during the last fifty years. One is the need to constantly improve labor productivity and the other is increasing competitiveness of nations. The high labor productivity of some countries, induces severe unemployment in the globalized world. In the other hand it is high time we understood that it is not competition, but cooperation that brings more happiness to humanity.Should we still opt for “happiness” and “sanity”, it is quite obvious that we all should, in economists’ terms, define our individual welfare functions corresponding to our own set of values, staying free from the influence of media, advertisements and fashion. The cornerstone to all this is the intelligent citizen who prefers local goods and services.

Spirituality and business: An interdisciplinary overview

The paper gives an interdisciplinary overview of the emerging field of spirituality and business. It uses insights from business ethics, theology, neuroscience, psychology, gender studies, and philosophy to economics, management, organizational science, and banking and refers to different religious convictions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, the Baha'i faith, and the North-American aboriginal worldview. The authors argue that the materialistic management paradigm has failed. They explore new values for post-materialistic management: frugality, deep ecology, trust, reciprocity, responsibility for future generations, and authenticity. Within this framework profit and growth are no longer ultimate aims but elements in a wider set of values. Similarly, cost-benefit calculations are no longer the essence of management but are part of a broader concept of wisdom in leadership. Spirit-driven businesses require intrinsic motivation for serving the common good and using holistic evaluation schemes for measuring success. The Palgrave Handbook of Business and Spirituality, edited by the authors, is a response to developments that simultaneously challenge the “business as usual” mindset.

Education 2.0: Exploring the challenges of Corvinus University in the long tail economy of global higher education

Our basic storyline is how the business and economics higher education landscape has changed with the introduction of the Bologna programs. We borrowed the fashionable long tail concept from e-business, and used it for modeling the new landscape of internationalization of universities. Internationalization, mobility, and the appearance of the internet generation at the gates of our universities in our opinion has brought us to a new e-era which, appropriately to our web analogies we might as well call Education 2.0.In our paper first we show the characteristics of the long tail model of the Bologna-based European higher education and potential messages for strategy making in this environment. We illustrate that benchmarking university strategies situated in the head of the long tail model will not always provide strategic guidance for universities sitting in the tail. For underlining some key concerns in the Hungarian niche, we used Corvinus University as a case study to illustrate some untapped challenges of the Hungarian Bologna reform. We explored three areas which are crucial elements of the “tail” strategy in our opinion: a) the influence of state regulation, b) social situations and impacts and c) internal university capabilities.

European studies: Taking stock and looking ahead

This essay is an attempt to generalize experiences of Central and Eastern European universities in the field of European Studies over the past 20 years. The paper follows the logic of business analysis in order to come up with proposals for future action.

The role of law and ethics in developing business management as a profession

Currently, business management is far from being recognised as a profession. This paper suggests that a professional spirit should be developed which could function as a filter of commercial reasoning. Broadly, management will not be organised within the framework of a well-established profession unless formal knowledge, licensing, professional autonomy and professional codes of conduct are developed sufficiently. In developing business management as a profession, law may play a key role. Where the idea is that business management should be more professsionalised, managers must show that they are willing to adopt ethical values, while arriving at business decisions. The paper argues that ethics cannot survive without legal regulation, which, in turn, will not be supported by law unless lawyers can find alternative solutions to the large mechanisms of the official society, secured by the monopolised coercion of the nation state. From a micro perspective of law and business ethics, communities can be developed with their own conventions, rules and standards that are generated and sanctioned within the boundaries of the communities themselves.

Solidifying system of democracy in the Central and Eastern European new EU members

The paper examines the requirements of an effective and legitimized democratic political system in the process of transition. The analysis and the conclusions are based on the Hungarian experience, which can carefully be applied to all Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Special focus is given to the relationship of legal certainty and the efficiency of the democratic system, to the tension between legalism and managerialism and to the characteristics of civil society organizations. In the conclusion special features of the transitional countries are pointed out.

Milyen értéket teremt a szabadidő sport és mi a kapcsolata a versenyképességgel? (What value is created by leisure sport and what is its relationship with the competitiveness?)

A sport egyre fontosabb tényezővé válik a társadalomban, és gazdasági súlya is egyre szignifikánsabban jelentkezik. A sportgazdaságtani írások nagy része azonban a hivatásos sporttal foglalkozik, a szabadidősport nem kap elég súlyt. Downward és szerzőtársai még 2009-ben is az elméleti és gyakorlati munkák hiányára hívták fel a figyelmet. Jelen cikk a szabadidősporttal kíván foglalkozni, és célja, hogy bemutassa, milyen értéket teremt a szabadidősport az egyén, a vállalatok, a társadalom és a gazdaság számára, valamint azt, hogy az egyes szereplők a szabadidősport által milyen módon lehetnek versenyképesebbek. A szabadidősport és a versenyképesség rövid fogalmi definiálása után a szerző bemutatja az irodalom-feldolgozás és a 31 kvalitatív mélyinterjú kapcsolódó eredményeit. ___________________ Sport has always been an important part of society but it is now becoming an increasingly important part of the economy. The sport management literature mostly deals with competitive sport, leisure sport has a week position. Downward et al.have written about the lack of theoretical and empirical works in the area of leisure sport. This article deals with leisure sport, the aim of the author’s work is: to present the value creation of leisure sport for individuals, companies, for society and economy, and to examine how they could be more competitive through leisure sport. After presenting short definitions of leisure sport and competitiveness, the author does literature review and presents the most important thoughts of the articles and the results of my 31 qualitative in-depth interviews.

Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe. An index for measuring a country’s potential to benefit from technology spillovers

In the paper, we construct a composite indicator to estimate the potential of four Central and Eastern European countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) to benefit from productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) in the manufacturing sector. Such transfers of technology are one of the main benefits of FDI for the host country, and should also be one of the main determinants of FDI incentives offered to investing multinationals by governments, but they are difficult to assess ex ante. For our composite index, we use six components to proxy the main channels and determinants of these spillovers. We have tried several weighting and aggregation methods, and we consider our results robust. According to the analysis of our results, between 2003 and 2007 all four countries were able to increase their potential to benefit from such spillovers, although there are large differences between them. The Czech Republic clearly has the most potential to benefit from productivity spillovers, while Poland has the least. The relative positions of Hungary and Slovakia depend to some extent on the exact weighting and aggregation method of the individual components of the index, but the differences are not large. These conclusions have important implication both the investment strategies of multinationals and government FDI policies.

Consumer behaviour and lifestyle patterns of Hungarian students in view of environmental awareness

The aim of this paper is to describe the consumer behaviour and everyday lifestyle patterns of Hungarian university and college students. The results are gained from an international survey, carried out by the Department of Environmental Economics and Technology at the Corvinus University of Budapest, supported by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism. As background literature, characteristics of the consumer society and the development of sustainable consumption as a concept are interpreted in the paper. The empirical analysis aims to describe the most important clusters of students, based on the factors of their consumer behaviour, environmental activism and pro-environmental everyday habits. Our results identify two extreme clusters which most significantly differ from each other: the environmental activists and the indifferent group. However, a third cluster has the most modest consumer behaviour, namely the group which considers product features, energy consumption and the behaviour of producers. They spend the least on consumer goods. The three other clusters show quite mixed lifestyle patterns.

A nemzetgazdasági versenyképesség sportszakmai és gazdasági aspektusai = Sport and economic aspects of competitiveness on national level

Tanulmányunk a gazdasági versenyképességgel, kiemelten annak nemzetgazdasági szintű vetületével és a sport esetében történő értelmezésével foglakozik. A gazdasági versenyképesség esetén kiemelten kezeljük az IMD és a WEF versenyképességi rangsorait, a sport esetén pedig szétválasztjuk a hivatásos és a szabadidősportot. A hivatásos sport esetén bemutatjuk a sportszakmai versenyképességet indikáló és a sportszakmai versenyképességre hatással lévő gazdasági és társadalmi mutatókat egyaránt. Összehasonlítási csoportot képeztünk, amelyben Magyarország és a környező országok szerepelnek és a komparatív elemzés kiterjed a gazdasági és a sportszakmai versenyképességre, valamint a sportszakmai versenyképességre ható gazdasági és társadalmi tényezőkre egyaránt. A sportszakmai versenyképességet az olimpiai érmek számával és azok pontértékével mérjük, amit az olimpiák teljes történelmére és az elmúlt 20 év különböző szakaszaira egyaránt vizsgálunk, míg a gazdasági és társadalmi tényezőket csak a mondanivalónk szempontjából legrelevánsabb évekre, az új évezredre vizsgálunk. A hivatásos sporttal kapcsolatos versenyképességi kérdésekből azt a következtetést vontuk le, hogy Magyarország történelmi sportszakmai eredményességének fenntartását a jelen gazdasági és társadalmi tényezők nem igazolják, sőt az elmúlt időszak visszaesését támasztják alá és a Londoni olimpián való szereplésünkkel kapcsolatban inkább az összehasonlítási csoporton belüli további visszacsúszást, mintsem az eredmény javulását támogatják. A tanulmányban azt állítjuk, hogy egyéni, vállalati és makrogazdasági versenyképességet is javíthat a szabadidősport. Mikro szinten, majd makrogazdasági szinten elemeztük a szabadidősport hatásait, valamint próbáltunk választ keresni arra a kérdésre, hogy hogyan válhat az egyén, a vállalat és végső célként a gazdaság versenyképesebbé a fizikai aktivitás által. A kevesebb betegség és egészségügyi kiadás, vagy éppen a kedvezőbb várható élettartami mutatók mellett termelékenység-növekedés, a versenyképességi rangsorokban pedig előkelőbb helyezések érhetők el. ______ Our paper tackles the concept of competitiveness in the national level and interprets it also in the field of sport as well. In the economics field we focus on the competitiveness rankings of IMD and WEF and in the sport field we differentiate between professional and leisure sport. In the case of professional sport we introduce the measures of sport competitiveness and its influencing economic and social factors as well. We have made a peer group which contains Hungary and its neighboring countries and the comparative study tackles the sport competitiveness and the influencing economic and social factors as well. We measure sport competitiveness with the Olympic medal count and the medals point value, which is counted in the whole Olympic history, and different phases of the last 20 years. The economic and social factors are compared only in the new millennia as this is the most relevant time frame of this study. From the competitiveness analysis of professional sport we concluded that the maintenance of Hungary’s historical sport successes is not proved by nowadays economic and social factors, however they support the past years decline. These factors also indicate that in London (2012)we would rather slip one more position back in the peer group, than rise again from our ashes. In our opinion leisure sport could enhance the competitiveness of individuals, companies, and economy also. We analysed the effects of leisure sport on the microeconomic and macroeconomic level, and tried to find answer to that question how could be individuals, companies, and economy more competitive through leisure sport. Besides less illness and health care expenditures, longer life expectancy, productivity growth, countries could be well placed in competitiveness’ rankings.

The impact of external market factors on operational practices and performance of companies

The links between operational practices and performance are well studied in the literature, both theoretically and empirically. However, mostly internal factors are inspected more closely as the basis of operational performance, even if the impact of external, environmental factors is often emphasized. Our research fills a part of this existing gap in the literature. We examine how two environmental factors, market dynamism and competition impact the use of some operational practices (such as quality improvement, product development, automation, etc.) and the resulting operations and business performance. The method of path analysis is used. Data were acquired through an international survey (IMSS – International Manufacturing Strategy Survey), which was executed in 2005, in 23 participating countries in so called "innovative" industries (ISIC 28-35) with a sample of 711 firms. Results show that both market dynamism and competition have large impact on business performance, but the indirect effects, through operations practices are rather weak compared to direct ones. The most influential practices are from the area of process and control, and quality management.

Effects of the current financial and economic crisis on the rural landscape as well as the agri-food sector in Europe and Central Asia

This paper reviews the expected effects of the current financial crisis and subsequent recession on the rural landscape, in particular the agri-food sector in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) on the basis of the structure of the rural economy and of different organisations and institutions. Empirical evidence suggests that the crisis has hit the ECA region the hardest. Agriculture contributes about 9% to gross domestic product (GDP) for the ECA region as a whole with 16% of the population being employed in the agricultural sector. As far as the impact of the financial crisis on the agri-food sector is concerned, there are a few interconnected issues: (1) reduction in income elastic food demand and commodity price decline, (2) loss of employment and earnings of rural people working in urban centres, implying also costly labour reallocation, (3) rising rural poverty originating mainly from lack of opportunities in the non-farm sector and a sizable decline of international remittances, (4) tightening of agricultural credit markets, and the (5) collapse of sectoral government support programs and social safety-net measures in many countries. The paper reveals how the crisis hit farming and broader agri-business differently in general and in the ECA sub-regions.

Benefits of a marketing cooperative in transition agriculture: Mórakert purchasing and service co-operative

The paper analyses the potential benefits of marketing cooperatives in Hungary, employing a transaction cost economics framework. We found that the purchased quantity, the existence of contracts, flexibility and trust are the most important factors farmers consider when selling their products via a cooperative. The most striking result is that diversification has positive influences on the share of cooperatives in farmers’ sale. Furthermore, farmers with larger bargaining power have less willingness to sell their product to the cooperative. Surprisingly, asset specificity has rather negative effects on the share of cooperatives in members’ sales.