József Poór

The Global Management Consulting Sector

While other practices or professions trace their roots back several centuries, management consulting is less than 150 years old. However, this sector has made giant strides in the West, especially in the United States, from the 1930s to the present and in Western Europe since the 1950s. Waves of internationalization occurred on both sides of the Atlantic. Expansion got a further boost when Central Europe opened the gates in 1990. With that opening and the World Wide Web, both local and big multinational management consultants stepped up their efforts. Further strides are being made now in the booming Asia-Pacific region. We first explore historical highlights and the key drivers of growth; then briefly analyze service offerings, enduse markets, available statistics, and company profiles. Finally, we probe emerging trends and the contours in this field, a sector that is an amalgam of management practice and a professional service. Our investigation is based on archives, theses, research databanks, association and company data, and our own primary work.

In focus, Hungarian and Central Eastern European characteristics of hunman resource management – An international comparative survey

The HR practices of the former state-socialist countries have gone through significant changes. The analysis of the developments, built on the Cranet (2004) survey, intends to describe the similarities and differences found between 6 countries of the Central Eastern European region and the total sample of 32 countries participating in the survey. The primary aim of the paper is to highlight the strands of international human resource management, investigating the main focuses, strong and weak elements of both CHRM and HRM. Moreover, it attempts to formulate suggestions on where and how to increase the explanatory power of the current models of CHRM, based on the experiences gained by this analysis.

Human Resource Management in the Central and Eastern European Region

The aim of this chapter is to examine recent developments of human resource management (HRM) practices in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and to compare these against the similarities and differences of their national contexts.

Comparative international human resource management (CIHRM) in the light of the Cranet Regional Research Survey in Transitional Economies

Purpose – The primary aim of the paper is to draw attention to the similarities in the historical background and in the transitional period of the post‐socialist CEE (Central and East European) countries, which make this region a distinctive cluster in Europe.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the authors attempt to supplement existing research by outlining the modernisation of a range of HR functions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and would like to explain how this special issue arose, to provide a historical perspective for the work undertaken by the Cranet research team from Bulgaria, Estonia and Hungary and to outline the context and significance of each of the attempts at modernisation in the HRM field.Findings – This analysis of developments, based on the Cranet surveys, aims to describe and explain the similarities and differences found among the three specific countries (Bulgaria, Estonia and Hungary), the somewhat broader sample comprising the CEE region and the full sa...

Factors Influencing Human Resource Management Solutions at Subsidiaries of Multinational Companies in Central and Eastern Europe

There is a shortage of empirical human resource management (HRM) literature in respect to identifying new patterns of multinational company (MNC) involvement in the Central and Eastern Europe region and the impact of ongoing MNC operations on the patterns of the HRM behavior of these companies. To counter this lack of understanding within the field, our broadly based, international survey asked 279 subsidiaries located in Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia and was conducted in 2010. It aimed to describe the relationships within the companies involved—between the influencing factors and the HR solutions applied—in a statistically valid way.

Training practices and organisational performance: A comparative analysis of domestic and international market oriented organisations in Central & Eastern Europe

The paper explores organisational level training practices in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region and tests their impact on overall organisational performance. We draw upon data from the CRANET international survey of HR practices in order to provide a comparative overview of training and development in selected CEE Countries. Distinguishing between organisations focusing on the international and on the domestic market, and drawing upon data from 1147 companies in eight countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia), we examine training practices and approaches and test their impact on organisational performance. Our findings demonstrate that the use of more developed training practices contributes to better organizational performance assessed by reference to service quality, productivity, profitability and rate of innovation. The market focus of the organisation in terms of serving a domestic or an international one also appears consequential with those operating internationally recording more extensive training practices.

Management compensation systems in Central and Eastern Europe: a comparative analysis

Abstract Drawing upon a large scale comparative data-set we explore the preferred approaches to managerial compensation pursued by organizations operating in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) transition economies of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia and Serbia. In order to generate insights on the state of management compensation and the extent to which these transition economies are characterized by idiosyncratic elements, relative to their Western European counterparts, we compare management compensation practices in these CEE economies (N = 1147) with approaches pursued in more developed western European economies (N = 2698). Overall, our results suggest that organizations in the CEE region share some similarities with their western counterparts, most especially in terms of the individual level of determination of pay for managers. Within the CEE region, we find that financial participation is less common than performance-related pay in the composition of the overall managerial reward package, though there are some variations between countries. National culture does appear significant as a determinant of variations in the preferred approach to management compensation.

Human resource management under change in the Romanian civil service in an international context

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a number of initiatives which have been spearheaded by the Romanian government in the field of HRM in the civil service. A more specific purpose is to determine the modelling strategy which best reflects the reform programme of HRM in the civil service, the topic of our study.Design/methodology/approach – This paper attempts to supplement existing research into New Public Management (NPM) by outlining the modernisation of a range of public HR functions in the country, and it would like to explain how this special issue arose, to provide a historical perspective for the work undertaken by the Romanian National Civil Servant Agency (NACS) and to outline the context and significance of each of the attempts at modernisation in the HRM field.Findings – Empirical evidence shows that the centralised Romanian civil service is in need of serious change if it is to deliver a more efficient and less politically driven level of practice. Many external and internal org...

HR Positioning—A Matter of National Culture? Facts from Hungary

Abstract Studies on human resource management (HRM) have mostly been conducted with a United States (US) perspective. A lack of independent and systematic analyses into the “European HRM” issues is still noticeable. As many economies of Central and Eastern Europe experienced a phase of transition after the socialist era and are now recovering from the 2008 global crisis, there is a need to examine the current state of human resources (HR) positioning. Therefore, the cultural and institutional contexts of each country must be taken into account. This article focuses on HR practices in Hungary; the underlying exploratory qualitative study examines which competencies HR managers perceive to be the most important in the Hungarian context, when it comes to strengthening the HR position.

Szervezeti képzések gyakorlata Magyarországon a nemzetközi adatok tükrében

Az elterő szervezeti kornyezetben (vallalatok es intezmenyek) folyo kepzesek es kulonosen a treningek hatekonysaganak ertekelese regota fennallo problemakor, amelyre a vezetők es HR-szakemberek hosszu idő ota keresik a megfelelő eszkozoket es modszereket. A szerzők cikkukben bemutatjak a 2016-ban tobb mint 400 magyarorszagi szervezet kozreműkodesevel (vallalatnal es intezmenynel) vegzett felmeresuk tapasztalatait, majd ezeket osszevetik a 2004-2005, 2008-2010 es 2015-16. evben folytatott, nemzetkozi, ugynevezett Cranet-felmeres soran kapott valaszokkal. Empirikus vizsgalatuk alapjan kovetkezteteseket vonnak le a magyarorszagi szervezeteknel folyo kepzesek es treningek jellemzőiről es az ott alkalmazott hatekonysagmeresi modszerekről.