Implementing integrated rural tourism: An event-based approach

In the past two decades, community involvement in local policy-making has gained increasing attention as an alternative approach to rural development in the European Union (EU), particularly in the context of the complementary sectors of agriculture such as tourism. Although there is a wide range of integrated approaches to tourism development in rural areas identified in the literature, the event-based approach has not been at the centre of attention so far. This paper aims to fill this gap and reports on the collaborative capacity building of the LEADER¹ Local Action Groups (LAGs) for rural tourism promotion in the context of an innovative, national-level event, the ‘Hungarian Rural Tourism Days’. A mixed-method approach was applied to explore and compare the supply-side views on the successes and failures of the event planning and organisation process and to derive key success factors of the event-based approach to Integrated Rural Tourism (IRT). The results provided evidence on the consequences of the failure to integrate local concerns into the event organisation process and highlighted the critical role of the intermediary management in establishing trust relationships with the rural service providers. Furthermore, it is argued that the major challenge of the event-based approach to IRT rests in the capacity of the stakeholders to collectively plan and implement a marketing strategy at the local level.     

Drivers of vertical intra‐industry trade: the case of the Hungarian agri‐food sector

This article investigates the drivers of vertical intra‐industry trade (VIIT) in Hungarian agri‐food trade with the European Union (EU). It identifies three possible ways to measure intra‐industry trade (IIT) flows (GHM, FF, and N methods) and defines six hypotheses to test for the drivers of VIIT with three panel data models (static, dynamic, and FEVD). The results suggest that factor endowments are negatively, while economic size is positively and significantly related to VIIT. Distance and VIIT were found to be negatively related as is commonly the case in the standard gravity model. It was also found that VIIT is greater if a New Member State (NMS) is exporting agri‐food produce to an NMS, while EU accession has ambiguously influenced the share of VIIT. In general, it seems that our results are independent from model estimations and interestingly they do not differ considerably as we a priori expected. Moreover, our results seem surprisingly robust across various measurements of ITT.     

The spirit of management reforms

Abstract

The article reports on a comparative case study of the administrative cultures of the Australian (Queensland) and the Hungarian governmental administration. The basic finding of the study is that the culture profiles of the two administrative (sub-)systems are surprisingly similar. This finding is used to conclude that the organizational level of administrative culture is unlikely to play a significant role in shaping New Public Management (NPM) reforms. Moreover, this conclusion sheds a cloud of doubt onto the claim frequently found in NPM literature that NPM reforms involve a replacement of ‘outmoded, bureaucratic thinking’ with a ‘culture of efficiency and entrepreneurship’.     

Drivers of Trust: Some Experiences from Hungarian Agricultural Cooperatives

This article examines the drivers of trust in the machinery-sharing cooperation arrangements of Hungarian field crops farms. Our research has focused on the role of 2 factors on the basis of the widely referred trust model: faith in loyalty and capability. The empirical results clearly confirm the hypothesis of the theoretical model, namely, partners will trust each other if their faith is high both in loyalty and in competence. Our research has also pointed out that the level of trust between partners is determined differently by the 2 examined factors: it is statistically proven that the impact of faith in loyalty is higher.     

动车组运用接续网络优化方法研究

通过分析,将动车组接续周转计划的优化求解过程归结为在动车组运用接续网络上应用搜索算法寻找满足约束条件和使目标函数最优的路径集合的过程。优化动车组运用接续网络可有效提高求解效率。应用匈牙利算法设计了以"使用动车组最少"为目标的动车组运用最优接续网络生成方法,以京津城际铁路本线列车平日运行图为例对方法进行验证。结果表明,该方法可求解最优接续网络,运算效率较高。     

Using a Choice Experiment to Estimate Farmers’ Valuation of Agrobiodiversity on Hungarian Small Farms

Agrobiodiversity is a crucial environmental resource. Much of the agrobiodiversity remaining in situ today is found on the semi-subsistence farms of poorer countries and the small-scale farms or home gardens of more industrialised nations. The traditional farms of Hungary are an example. Labelled “home gardens” as a reflection of their institutional identity during the collectivisation period, they are micro-agroecosystems that provide important functions such as food security and diet quality. This paper applies the choice experiment method to estimate the private benefits farmers derive from four components of the agrobiodiversity found in Hungarian home gardens: richness of crop varieties and fruit trees; crop landraces; integrated crop and livestock production; and soil micro-organism diversity. The analysis is based on primary data collected in three environmentally sensitive areas where pilot agri-environmental programmes have been initiated as part of the Hungarian National Rural Development Plan. Findings demonstrate variation in the private values of home gardens and their attributes across households and regions, contributing to understanding the potential role of home gardens in these agri-environmental schemes. This study has implications for sustaining agrobiodiversity in transitional economies.     

Anti-shopping tourism: a new concept in the field of consumption

In this article, based on qualitative research in Hungary, we propose a new phrase for the field of tourist consumption. Our notion ‘anti-shopping tourism’ refers to the resistant attitude towards consumption and spending money during shopping-related tours. The research discussed in the paper analyses participants’ motivations, attitudes and behaviour on one-day coach trips that include various programmes, for example, sightseeing, lunch, spa visits and even a range of gifts, for a very low price, in exchange for participation in a professional sales show during the trip. Our main goal is to explain and, from an economic and anthropological point of view, conceptualise this form of tourist attitude, and to show how this unique way of travel may be situated in a certain historical setting in Hungary, more than two decades after the collapse of the socialist regime. In order to understand how the participating individuals negotiated this unique form of travel that exists in a grey zone of the institutionalised travel industry, notions such as debt, sacrifice, resistance, gift, seduction and informal contract are discussed and connected to the phenomenon.     

Human Resource Management of Japanese Companies in Hungary: How do Japanese and Hungarian Styles Blend?

ABSTRACT

A qualitative interview-based research with 32 participating companies, this article investigates the human resource management practices of Japanese subsidiaries in Hungary. The findings indicate that human resource management practices in Hungarian subsidiaries of Japanese companies are characterized as a hybrid of Japanese and Hungarian styles. Greater Japanese influence was found in the characteristics of the human resources department, corporate culture, safety practices, and trainings, whereas greater Hungarian influence was found in pay, benefits, and recruitment methods. The findings contribute uniquely to the understanding of whether and how the country-of-origin effect, localization effect, and dominance effect interplay in configuring human resource management practices in foreign subsidiaries of multinational companies.     

Cooperation and Information Sharing versus Job Satisfaction in Some International Environments

Abstract

This study examines relationships between country and general job satisfaction, workplace cooperation, information sharing and managerial willingness to help promote employees in Bolivia, Hungary and Poland. The paper also reports on main and second order interactions between country effects and managers' willingness to promote versus information sharing and cooperation. Important national differences are reported on perceived country values held and anomalies found in practice on information sharing and cooperation. Recommendations are offered using information technology.     

Roma employment in Hungary after the post‐communist transition1

We analyse the magnitude and the causes of the low formal employment rate of the Roma in Hungary between 1993 and 2007. The employment rate of the Roma dropped dramatically around 1990. The ethnic employment gap has been around 40 percentage points for both men and women and has remained remarkably stable. Differences in education are the most important factor behind the gap, the number of children is important for female employment and geographic differences play little role once education is controlled for. Conditional on employment, the gap in log earnings is 0.3, and half of it is explained by educational differences.