About / research
THE FIFTH PHASE 2010-2015
The Fifth Phase was launched with a focus on international contexts of competitiveness and on research capacity development in 2010.
A research project was supported by the European Union and co-financed by the European Social Fund (TÁMOP 4.2.1.B-09/1/KMR-2010-0005) in the period of 2010-2012. The research work was done in four areas: (1) International economic processes, (2) Social environment and competitiveness, (3) Economics policies and competitiveness, and (4) Competitiveness of business enterprises. More than 130 junior and senior scholars and 30 PhD students and PhD candidates participated in the project.
Findings of the research project were presented and discussed in the First Working Conference on Competitiveness, in March, 2012.
The 5th enterprise competitiveness survey was launched in 2012 to support further empirical research work on competitiveness.
The “Competing the world” research program arrived at another milestone. The interim report summarizes the major findings of the recent competitiveness surveys. The surveys were run in 1996, 1999, 2004 and 2009. In 2009 the data were coming from more than 1200 business leaders and they were an excellent base to further deep analysis, which was at the core of the research program for the following 1 to 2 years. Apart from that the prior researches started at an earlier phase of the competitiveness research program were also continued cooperating with the Hungarian Competition Authority, the State Audit Office of Hungary and other researchers, institutes.
In 2007-2009 the researches focused on the topics that were the most important in the prior years, mostly based on the surveys run in 2004-2006. The projects that were built around the main research topics could operate differently from a structural and a financial point of view. According to the structure described, the heads of the prior projects were asked to become a member of the research council (Károly, Balaton, Attila Chikán (president), Erzsébet Czakó, Krisztina Demeter, Krisztina Kolos, Zita Zoltayné Paprika), where their task was to pay close attention to the research process, to give their opinion on it and to prepare the survey that was about to run in 2009. The research focused on four main topics: (1) The international elements of the Hungarian business sphere (2) The social embededness of business level competitiveness (3) National economic policy and business level competitiveness (4) Business strategies, development tendencies and competitiveness. The Center cooperated with other institutes to the extent the topic required it: in topic (1) the Competition Culture Center of the Hungarian Competition Authority, in topic (2) the Faculty of Public Administration and its Civil Service Department, and the State Audit Office of Hungary and in topic (3) the PPH Public Policy Analysis institute contributed. The researches under topic (4) were led and done by the leading colleagues of the Center, similarly to previous years. The competitiveness survey run for the fourth time was the final piece of the researches.
The researches received financial support from the Development and Methodology Institute of the State Audit Office of Hungary, the Competition Culture Center of the Hungarian Competition Authority, the OTP Bank Ltd., MOL Plc. and the Business Economics Scientific Education Foundation.
The results and output of the researches
The research resulted in 10 working papers. In this phase the professional workshops were renewed and the local experts participated in the workshop debates. The results of the researches were introduced at many local and international conferences. Two volumes were published in 2007 and 2010 edited by Gusztáv Báger and Erzsébet Czakó, related to the topic number (2). A Hungarian volume – with the contribution of 18 authors – edited by Attila Chikán and Erzsébet Czakó titled “Competing the world. Competitiveness of Hungarian businesses in the new millennium.” was published by the Academic Press in 2010.
The Competitiveness Research Center engaged in running the business competitiveness survey for the third time in 2004 as a new phase of the Competing the world researches titled „Economic comeptitiveness from the business point of view, 2004-2006”. The research program launched in 2004 had one main and two supplementary aims. The main aim was to assess the development tendencies characterizing the domestic business sphere based on the competitiveness surveys continued and the supplementary analysis, and to evaluate the development in the time of accession to the European Union. The supplementary aims were to compare the results with the performance and results of leading international businesses and to confront the findings with the leading international theories and explanations about the market economy. The researches centered around the realization of business competitiveness, which depends mostly on the upper level managers, who need to lead and operate their businesses so that they are capable of internal and external adaptation. Four internal adaptation areas were defined – strategy, leadership and decision making, value creation and inter-firm relationships – that represented the areas of the four research projects led by Károly Balaton, Zita Zoltayné Paprika, Krisztina Demeter and Krisztina Kolos. The perceived focus points of the external adaptation areas at the time were also categorized into four groups – the EU accession; the situation of the business sphere (business environment); technological development and the development of knowledge society; and the ownership structure. The four dimensions were taken into consideration by the researchers when researching their specific topic. A researches about the business competitiveness and the macroeconomic sphere were coordinated in the framework of a so-called central project led by Attila Chikán and Erzsébet Czakó.
Contributors, results and output of the researches
Close to 200 people, mostly colleagues at CUB, PhD. and university students contributed to the researches, that resulted in 42 working papers, 10 other papers, 4 project closing papers and a closing report of the researches. The papers are accessible at http://edok.lib.corvinus.hu. An international and a national conference were organized related to the research program in May 2006 and 2007. The results of the research program were continuously published in the Budapest Management Review. One of the most valuable results is the model incorporating and integrating the elements of micro- and macroeconomic competitiveness described by Chikán (2008) in English and by Chikán – Czakó (2009) in Hungarian.
The Center is thanking OTP Bank Ltd., MOL Inc., Hungarian International Trading Bank, National Development Office, Business Economics Scientific Association and Business Economics Scientific Education Foundation for the financial support.
UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) called CUB upon to run a regional research in late 2001. The aim of the project was to study the automobile industry, a driving sector in the Central-European region as a basis of the Technology Foresight. The project was closed in 2003 and resulted in an industry analysis in 4 countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland). (In Hungary both an English and a Hugarian paper was prepared.) The closing report of the project was based on the debates during the prepartaion of the sutdies. The results of the project were introduced at the Technology Foresight Summit 2003. in March, organized by UNIDO. The coordinators of the project were Erzsébet Czakó and Zita Zoltayné Paprika.
The second phase of the research consisted of the analysis of the database built up form the survies run in the framework of Competing the world research program in 1996 and in 1999. The research was led by Erzsébet Czakó and Zita Zoltayné Paprika.
Apart from the Interim Report introducing the first results, a detailed analysis was prepared for the Ministry of National Economy in February, 2000. The researches were supported by the Ministry of National Economy, the Axel Springer-Budapest Press Ltd., the Antenna Hungária Inc., the Budapesti Elektromos Művek Inc., the Dunaferr Inc., the Malév Ltd. and the Business Economics Scientific Association.
The Competitiveness Research Center was founded in this second phase by Zoltán Antal-Mokos, András Bauer, József Bayer, József Berács, Miklós Dobák and Erzsébet Czakó, director.
As a closure of the first two phases of the research an English and a Hungarian book – a collaborative work of 20 teachers-researchers edited by Attila Chikán, Erzsébet Czakó and Zita Zoltayné Paprika – was published by the Academic Press in 2002 Spring.
The research program was launched in 1995 with the aim to examine why the performance of the immensely altering micro sphere seemed to contradict the disappointing macroeconomic statistical data in Hungary, a transition country around the time. The initial hypothesis was that the micro sphere of the economy was characterized with much more promising factors than the national economy level statistics suggested. The objective was to discover these factors and evaluate them based on international comparisons. The object of the research was the micro level competitiveness, which was examined by some research projects at various business schools in the United States a couple of years before. Such researches and the approach of the US Competitiveness Policy Council served as models int he course of the research program of the Center.
The structure of the research was built on two dimensions as follows. The first dimension dealing with the business operations was divided into three spheres: production (material), financial and social spheres. The other dimension of the analysis was concerned with the businesses as organizations approached at different organizational levels. Following this logic, 8 research groups with specific programs were launched led by István Ábel, István Bartók, Attila Chikán, Erzsébet Czakó, Tamás Csányi, Krisztina Demeter, Miklós Dobák and László Zsolnai. An important part of the research was the competitiveness survey addressing 1300 leaders of 325 businesses in Hungary. The Center runs the survey from time to time and its first results are published in a form of an interim report.
The research program was supported by the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) Washington, US., the Hungarian National Asset Management Inc., the National Comittee for Technological Development, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Rural Development, a the Friedrich von Neumann foundation, the Hungarian Management Institute and the Business Economics Scientific Association.
The collaborators, results and ouputs of the research
133 full-time teachers and researchers and more than 100 university students have benn participating in the research program resulting in more than 270 research output – working papers, case studies and reports – that have been sent to more than 3000 addressees. The research program managed to run according to the planned schedule. Research results were published in Economy – Business – Management, Society and Ecnomoy and Management Studies.