Statistical Analysis of the Performance Data of Central and Eastern European Water Utilities - International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET)

A Világbank az 1990-es évek végén egy nagyszabású, nemzetközi teljesítmény-értékelési programot indított a víz- és szennyvíz-szolgáltató vállalatok körében. Az International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET) elnevezésű kezdeményezés keretében a szolgáltatók egy szabványosított kérdőíven információt adnak meg működésükről. Az egyedi, cégszintű adatokból egy adatbázis készül, mely lehetővé teszi a vállalatok működésének összehasonlító elemzését, amit teljesítmény-értékelésnek (benchmarking) is szokás nevezni. A programról és eddigi eredményeiről angol nyelvű információ a www.ib-net.org honlapon található. A felmérést eddig több, mint 70 országban végezték el, köztük Magyarországon is. Itthon a REKK kapott megbízást a feladat végrehajtására. Az adatgyűjtésen túl az adatbázisra alapozva Közép és Kelet-Európa országainak víziközmű cégeiről statisztikai elemzést végeztünk az alap adottságok és a költségek összefüggésének feltárására.

The impact of perceived corporate environmental performance on the behavior of capital market decision makers : analysis of food industry companies

Environmental protectionism and sustainable development has been gaining increased attention among governments, investors and consumers alike. As a result, firms are facing growing pressure from the various stakeholders to improve their environmental performance. This study is focusing on the food industry, which in recent years has been a subject of increased scrutiny due to their role in resource consumption, waste generation and unsustainable production practices. Our research is aiming to examine how the financial community evaluates the environmental stewardship of food industry companies as proxied by market reactions in response to environmental news. Are all company related environmental news items evaluated equally, and which financial and non-financial firm-specific attributes can influence market responses? Have there been changes in reactions on the stock exchange in the past two decades?

Páros összehasonlításon alapuló pontozási eljárások monotonitása: önkonzisztencia és önkonzisztens monotonitás. Adalékok a pontozási eljárások axiomatikus tárgyalásához = Monotonicity of paired comparison-based ranking methods: self-consistency and self-consistent monotonicity. Contributions to an axiomatic analysis of scoring methods

A cikk a páros összehasonlításokon alapuló pontozási eljárásokat tárgyalja axiomatikus megközelítésben. A szakirodalomban számos értékelő függvényt javasoltak erre a célra, néhány karakterizációs eredmény is ismert. Ennek ellenére a megfelelő módszer kiválasztása nem egy-szerű feladat, a különböző tulajdonságok bevezetése elsősorban ebben nyújthat segítséget. Itt az összehasonlított objektumok teljesítményén érvényesülő monotonitást tárgyaljuk az önkonzisztencia és önkonzisztens monotonitás axiómákból kiindulva. Bemutatásra kerülnek lehetséges gyengítéseik és kiterjesztéseik, illetve egy, az irreleváns összehasonlításoktól való függetlenséggel kapcsolatos lehetetlenségi tétel is. A tulajdonságok teljesülését három eljárásra, a klasszikus pontszám eljárásra, az ezt továbbfejlesztő általánosított sorösszegre és a legkisebb négyzetek módszerére vizsgáljuk meg, melyek mindegyike egy lineáris egyenletrendszer megoldásaként számítható. A kapott eredmények új szempontokkal gazdagítják a pontozási eljárás megválasztásának kérdését. _____ The paper provides an axiomatic analysis of some scoring procedures based on paired comparisons. Several methods have been proposed for these generalized tournaments, some of them have been also characterized by a set of properties. The choice of an appropriate method is supported by a discussion of their theoretical properties. In the paper we focus on the connections of self-consistency and self-consistent-monotonicity, two axioms based on the comparisons of object's performance. The contradiction of self-consistency and independence of irrel-evant matches is revealed, as well as some possible reductions and extensions of these properties. Their satisfiability is examined through three scoring procedures, the score, generalised row sum and least squares methods, each of them is calculated as a solution of a system of linear equations. Our results contribute to the problem of finding a proper paired comparison based scoring method.

Cross-country and inter-temporal analysis of Supply Chain Integration (SCI): China, Hungary and the Netherlands - changes in SCI from 1996 to 2008

Using plant level data from a global survey with multiple time frames, one begun in the late 1990s, this paper introduces measures of supply chain integration and discusses the dynamic relationship between the level of integration and a set of internal and external performance measurements. Specifically, data from Hungary, The Netherlands and The People’s Republic of China are used in the analyses. The time frames considered range from the late 1990s till 2009, encompassing major changes and transitions. Our results seem to indicate that SCI has an underlying structure of four sets of indicators, namely: (1) delivery frequency from the supplier or to the customer; (2) sharing internal processes with suppliers; (3) sharing internal processes with buyers and (4) joint facility location with partners. The differences between groups in terms of several performance measures proved to be small, being mostly statistically insignificant - but looking at the ANOVA table we can conclude that in this sample of companies those having joint location with their partners seem to outperform others.

The Role of Marketing in Corporate Competitiveness: Marketing Practice Analysis of Hungarian Companies

The objective of this article is to analyse the marketing practice of Hungarian companies. On the one hand, the role of marketing function in the company has been revealed, and on the other hand the relationship between marketing efforts and market performance has been investigated. In frame of the Hungarian Competitiveness Studies, 300 marketing executives were surveyed to rate the marketing practice of their companies, concentrating on branding, pricing policy, applied marketing channels and promotional activities. The results confirm that sophisticated marketing practice leads to higher business performance. Keywords: marketing tools, competitiveness, performance

Content and drivers of performance management in agency-type organizations of the hungarian public administration

The improving performance of public administration and the reform of public financing system have been on agenda in Hungary for many years, in accordance with the international trends. However, governments have not expected and supported creating of a performance-oriented public administration in a comprehensive and explicit way. Nevertheless, there are bottom-up initiatives at organizational level, which target performance-oriented organizational function. The research focuses on organizations of central public administration where the successful application of performance management methods is most likely based on the international literature. These are the so called agency-type organizations, which are in Hungary called autonomous state-administration organizations independent of the Government (e.g. Hungarian Competition Authority), government bureaus (e.g. Hungarian Central Statistical Office), and central offices subordinated to the government (either the cabinet or a ministry) (e.g. Hungarian Meteorological Service). The studied agencies are legally independent organizations with managerial autonomy based on public law. The purpose of this study is to get an overview on organizational level performance management tools applied by Hungarian agencies, and to reveal the reasons and drivers of the application of these tools. The empirical research is based on a mixed methods approach which combines both quantitative methods and qualitative procedures. The first – quantitative – phase of the author’s research was content analysis of homepages of the studied organizations. As a results she got information about all agencies and their practice related to some performance management tools. The second – qualitative – phase was based on semi-structured face-to-face interviews with some senior managers of agencies. The author selected the interviewees based on the results of the first phase, the relatively strong performance orientation was an important selection criteria.