The Internationalization of Hungarian SMEs

Kállay, László; Lengyel, Imre

doi:10.4337/9781848441309.00025

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The Small Business Act 1999 and other government initiatives were designed to ease the financial burdens of the Hungarian small businesses in the 2000s. However, as the competitive pressure of mainly large, foreign owned multinationals increased, especially in the retail and construction sectors, the weaknesses of the Hungarian SMEs became evident (Kállay and Lengyel, 2008). Under-financing, inadequate innovation, insufficient managerial skills and weak cultural embeddings have hampered the competitiveness of Hungarian SMEs.…”

Section: Hrm In the Hungarian Sme Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

HRM in the Hungarian SME sector

2010

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Purpose -This paper aims to provide an original picture of a selection of human resource management (HRM) activities in the micro, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Hungary and to explore the extent to which these activities can be related to variations in firm size and variations in firm performance. Design/methodology/approach -The study measures the presence or absence of a selection of HRM activities through a questionnaire survey of a large sample of 678 Hungarian SMEs. Findings -Hungarian SMEs, in their working relationships, are closer to the "happy family" model of the SME than the "bleak house" model. Employee morale was perceived as high and only one in ten SMEs felt their employees were opposed to change. Owners were reluctant to seek advice from those outside the firm. They also showed reluctance to discuss future plans with their employees although they did tend to consult employees who would be affected directly by any change. Communication within SMEs was predominantly informal. Surprisingly, given the skills shortages highlighted by SMEs in other economies, very few of the Hungarian SMEs identified skills shortages as a problem and formal training programmes were reported only rarely. Variations between micro, small and medium sized firms are highlighted to emphasize the heterogeneous nature of the Hungarian SME sector.Research limitations/implications -The HRM activities considered provide a picture of only a small number of HRM activities in Hungarian SMEs but the findings imply the relationships examined here are deserving of further exploration both in Hungary and other transition economies. Originality/value -The paper provides a detailed picture of selected aspects of HRM in smaller businesses within a transition economy.

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Section: Hrm In the Hungarian Sme Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

HRM in the Hungarian SME sector

2010

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“…In the Hungarian economy more than 50% of the registered capital of companies and partnerships is in the hands of foreign owners. International stake is significant in all SME types, reaching at least 27-28 % (KÁLLAY and LENGYEL, 2008). Similarly to large companies, half of the capital of medium-sized enterprises is in foreign hands.…”

Section: Germanymentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Innovation Systems in Hungary: The Failing Synergy at the National Level

Lengyel¹,

Leydesdorff²

2011

Regional Studies

119

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We use entropy statistics in this paper to measure the synergies of knowledge exploration, knowledge exploitation, and organizational control in the Hungarian innovation system. Our data consists of high-tech, medium-tech firms, and knowledge-intensive services categorized in terms of sub-regions (proxy for geography), industrial sectors (proxy for technology), and firm size (proxy for organization). Configurational information among these three dimensions is used as an indicator of the reduction of uncertainty or, in other words, the synergy among the knowledge functions. The results indicate that three regimes were generated in the Hungarian transition period with very different dynamics: (1) Budapest and its agglomeration emerge as a knowledge-based innovation system on every indicator; (2) in the north-western part of the country, foreign-owned companies and FDI have induced a shift in knowledgeorganization; while (3) the system seems to be organized in the eastern and southern part of the country in accordance with government expenditures. The national level no longer adds to the synergy among these regional innovation systems.

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“…Our particular case is the transformation of Hungarian regions, in which regions that were specialized in heavy industry during the socialist era faced serious difficulties and declined in the 1990s (Lengyel & Szakálné Kanó, 2013). Starting from the second half of the 1990s, foreign firms became key actors in determining the export and employment levels of regional industries (Kállay & Lengyel, 2008;Lengyel, 2003). These firms brought new knowledge into the regions offering new sources of dynamics (Halpern & Muraközy, 2007;Inzelt, 2003).…”

Section: Case Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agglomeration, foreign firms and firm exit in regions under transition: the increasing importance of related variety in Hungary

Kanó

Lengyel

Elekes

et al. 2019

European Planning Studies

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Related variety of economic activities is widely recognized to induce regional development; however, it is not clear how this mechanism takes place in regions that go through major structural and institutional transformation. Furthermore, foreign direct investment (FDI) is typically a major source of structural change in these areas; and we still need a better understanding on how foreign-owned (foreign) firms affect the dynamics of domestic-owned (domestic) companies. For these reasons we analyse firm-level exit in Hungarian city regions between 1996 and 2011, over the late post-socialist transition in manufacturing industries, focusing on the difference between foreign and domestic firms. Introducing ownership into the related variety calculation, we estimate the probability of firm exit with the region-level related variety calculated separately for foreign and domestic firms. Our results suggest that related variety of foreign firms decreases the probability of domestic firm exit earlier during the economic transition compared to the related variety of domestic firms. This finding supports the idea that FDI plays a formative role in regions under transition, and shows that domestic firms benefit from being in agglomerations where foreign firms are technologically related to each other.

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The Internationalization of Hungarian SMEs

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

HRM in the Hungarian SME sector

HRM in the Hungarian SME sector

Regional Innovation Systems in Hungary: The Failing Synergy at the National Level

Agglomeration, foreign firms and firm exit in regions under transition: the increasing importance of related variety in Hungary

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