Business Value of IT Investment: The Case of a Low Cost Airline’s Website

Using the case of a low cost airline company’s website we analyze some special research questions of information technology valuation. The distinctive characteristics of this research are the ex post valuation perspective; the parallel and comparative use of accounting and business valuation approaches; and the integrated application of discounted cash flow and real option valuation. As the examined international company is a strategic user of e-technology and wants to manage and account intangible IT-assets explicitly, these specific valuation perspectives are gaining practical significance.

A vállalati informatika szerepe a versenyképesség alakításában a pénzügyi és gazdasági válság időszakában (Corporate IT in shaping the competitiveness of the Hungarian enterprises in the financial and economic crisis)

A cikk az informatika és a versenyképesség kapcsolatát vizsgálja. A Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem Versenyképesség Kutatási Programjának korábbi felmérései óta számos új technológia bukkant fel, illetve hazánkat is elérte a világméretű pénzügyi és gazdasági válság hatása. E kihívások tükrében érdemesnek tűnt újra megvizsgálni az információtechnológia (IT) szerepét a versenyképesség alakításában. / === / In this paper the relationship between information technology (IT) and competitiveness is tackled. Since the authors’ previous surveys within their Competitiveness Research Program several new technologies have emerged, and the influence of the word wide financial and economic crisis has reached Hungary as well. In the face of these challenges it is worth reexamining the role of IT in shaping the competitive position of companies. The structure of the paper is as follows. A brief theoretical introduction is provided before their research questionsare presented. After that, the paper contains an analysis on selected fields of the corporate IT function, namely IT infrastructure, IT applications, IT management and IT strategy. Based on this, conclusions are made both at the end of the main parts, and in the final section of the paper. As far as the final conclusions are concerned, the majority of respondents do not regard IT today as a source of sustainable or contestable competitive advantage, though the dominant opinion underlines that IT is a strategic necessity. Besides this, their research results suggest a kind of association between corporate performance and the maturity level of the IT function. However, even the best performing companies are not prepared yet to effectively respond to their own prediction that forecasts the strengthening role of IT as a competitive factor.

Szervezeti karriergondozás a nők előmenetelének szolgálatában: Sikeres európai uniós és hazai megoldások (Organizational career development in the career chance of women: successful European and Hungarian solutions)

A szerző tanulmányában a női karrierpálya és a szervezeti karriergondozás sajátosságait mutatja be. A női munkaerő sajátos munkaerő. Sajátosságait a társadalmi munkamegosztásban elfoglalt helye, szerepe, az ebből is táplálkozó férfiakétól eltérő személyisége, motivációja, habitusa, munkahellyel és munkakörrel kapcsolatos elvárásai alkotják. A hatékony emberierőforrás-menedzsment célja, hogy a rendelkezésre álló munkaerő-potenciált, kompetenciatárat minél jobban kihasználja. Ezért hasznosítja a sokszínűségből fakadó szinergiahatást, és számol a különböző alkalmazotti rétegek eltérő adottságaival. _____________________ The career needs of women demands special requirements towards organizational career development which covers the whole process of the human resource management. It is necessary to take attention to the elimination of all forms of discrimination in the organization, to develop an objective selection process based on competences, to eliminate barriers of advancement, to contact and inform women during the paid child-care period, to provide new ways to balance career and family, to extend the mentor system, to aid the preparation of individual career plans, to extend the different forms of flexible employment, to eliminate the wage and income differences. In Hungary the lack of women-friendly social environment and organizational culture prevent the development of diversity management, the fulfilling of the special mission and tasks of female career development. These circumstances waste the human resources in social and organizational level, too. It results the insufficient utilization of the competences of skilled workforce, especially that of women.

Price of unsustainability. Economic impacts of climate change

Global problems, rapid and massive regional changes in the 21st century call for genuine long-term, awareness, planning and well focused actions from both national governments and international organizations. This book wishes to contribute to building an innovative path of strategic views in handling the diverse challenges, and more emphatically, the economic impacts of climate change. Although the contributors of this volume represent several approaches, they all rely on some common grounds such as the costbenefit analysis of mitigation and adaptation, and on the need to present an in-depth theoretical and practical dimension. The research accounted for in this book tried to integrate and confront various types of economics approaches and methods, as well as knowledge from game theory to country surveys, from agricultural adaptation to weather bonds, from green tax to historical experience of human adaptation. The various themes and points of views do deserve the attention of the serious academic reader interested in the economics of climate change. We hope to enhance the spread of good solutions resulting from world wide disputes and tested strategic decisions. WAKE UP! It is not just the polar bears' habitat that is endangered, but the entire human form of life.

Future of Capitalism

The moral foundation of capitalism should be reconsidered. Modern capitalism is disembedded from the social and cultural norms of society and produced a deep financial, ecological and social crisis. Competitiveness is the prevailing ideology of today’s business and economic policy. Companies, regions, and national economies seek to improve their productivity and gain competitive advantage. But these efforts often produce negative effects on various stakeholders at home and abroad. Competitiveness involves self-interest and aggressivity and produces monetary results at the expense of nature, society and future generations The collaborative enterprise framework promotes a view in which economic agents care about others and themselves and aim to create values for all the participants in their business ecosystems. Their criterion of success is mutually satisfying relationships with the stakeholders. New results of positive psychology and the Homo reciprocans model of behavioral sciences support this approach. The economic teachings of world religions challenge the way capitalism is functioning, and their corresponding perspectives are worthy of consideration. They represent life-serving modes of economizing which can assure the livelihood of human communities and the sustainability of natural ecosystems. Ethics and the future of capitalism are strongly connected. If we want to sustain capitalism for a long time we have to create a less violent, more caring form of it.

Tények, adatok és mutatószámok felhasználásának anomáliái (The anomalies of the usage of facts, data, and indexes)

Tudomány nem létezik a tények felmérése, adatok gyűjtése és felhasználása nélkül. A tényeket azonban el lehet hallgatni vagy ferdíteni, az adatokat sokféleképpen lehet összeválogatni, az azokból készült mutatószámokat pedig a bonyolult és változó valóság leegyszerűsítő, sőt meghamisító ábrázolására, illetve magyarázatára is fel lehet használni. _____ Economics cannot do without measuring. However, the required data are not always available or they are not reliable, as some cases of population census exemplify it. The indicators we use, particularly composite indexes, are often misleading because they oversimplify complex phenomena or processes, and neglect important non-measurable ones, as the examples of the per capita GDP indicator measuring the development level of countries, and the composite indexes measuring the “human development” of countries (HDI), or their “national competitiveness” (GCI) may show. To avoid the enchantment of numbers, the quantitative approach must always be combined and corrected by a critical, holistic and qualitative approach.