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Analysis the advanced ICT usage of the Hungarian SME sector for preparing a domestic agri-food research
147-153Views:165In the Hungarian agro-food sector SMEs have a key role but regarding the tendency of the performance of SME sector, comparing to EU-28 average, the performance of Hungarian SME sector has gradually worsened between 2008 and 2015 while the EU average has an increasing trend. ICT can help enterprises and this article is an overview of the ICT situation of Hungarian SMEs. It is important to analyse in detail the ICT usage characteristics of agro SMEs in the food supply chain because these ICT devices, tools and services are crucial to smooth the information flow within the chain. For all these reasons our work aims to find out how Hungarian agro-food SMEs use ICT and how ICT adoption affect their business procedures, performance and development. A striking observation to emerge from the data comparison is the difference among SMEs and large enterprises regarding the usage of the different basic and advanced ICT solutions. A much bigger percent of large companies use advanced ICT then SMEs and mainly small enterprises are lagging behind as the attitudes of medium sized enterprises are rather similar to the large ones. In Hungary small enterprises in agro-food industry are in difficult financial state and for them free Cloud Computing services can offer good opportunities as they do not have initial costs. ICT adoption is very important to them as ICT sector is a dynamically growing sector and if customers and partners of an enterprise adapt faster to these technological innovations, it may have a negative effect on the different processes, performance and financial results of the organisation. In this article our aim was to determine the main question groups for our questionnaire which focus mainly on ICT solutions supporting the quality of communication and relationship between partners. As the basic IT tools are available in the major part even in the SMEs besides large companies, the two main issues will be the usage of advanced online services and the usage of high quality ICT solutions.
JEL Code: M15
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Measuring efficiency of intellectual capital in agriculture sector of Vojvodina
25-31Views:139During three-hundred-year history of the market economy, the main sources of wealth creation have changed from the natural resources (mainly land and relatively unskilled labor with the exception of the master craftsman), tangible material assets (buildings, machinery and equipment, funds) to intangible assets (knowledge and information of all types) that may be contained in the people, organizations, or physical resources. In the later period of the twentieth century, science has acquired the features of direct production force. The term direct implies that unlike the relationship which existed between science and production in the IXX century, where scientific advances was incorporated through the physical labor in the tools, which, in turn, created new value through the physical labor, the relationship between science and production has become all direct, immediate, because the scientific advances allowed the funds to be produced with less labor and allowed funds itself to become "smarter" and as such to require less human intervention and human physical labor in the final production process.As a result, the need for physical labor continuously declined with time, and the application of labor is moved from direct production to processes of preparing and organizing production. Also, a large part of today's knowledge that is used in production is not embodied in machinery, and the effects of this are immense.
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The relationship between corporate governance and corporate social responsibility
28-34Views:654Corporate governance (CG) is a corporate governance system for large companies which includes policies and procedures for corporate social responsibility (CSR). The present study examines the relationships between CG and CSR, and analyzes the studies that separate or combine the explanation of the two concepts.CG can be interpreted as the relationship between governors and stakeholders. Angyal (2009) and Auer (2017) agree that the two phenomena coexist and are connected at several points. The goals of the two phenomena are intertwined, compliance with other important requirements (environmental, labor law) besides the primary corporate goal. CG is a system based on the sharing of power and roles between owners, management and boards (board, supervisory board). The roles of ownership, supervision, and control are separated. The division of power means that the boards keep the management under strict control and the owners can account for the boards (Tasi, 2012). According to Tasi (2012), responsible CG involves careful management; financial planning and implementation; control mechanisms for the operation of the company; company transparency and business ethics
issues; publicizing corporate information and corporate social responsibility policies and practices. Angyal (2009) sees that CG and CSR are intertwined “neither intersection, nor intersection, nor parallelism, but coexistence”. (Angel,
2009: 14). It does not agree with the incompatibility of corporate governance or corporate governance and social responsibility, in practice the former two are more common. Corporate governance encompasses corporate social responsibility policies, procedures, and can be interpreted as the relationship between governors and stakeholders. The authors of the studies analyzed agree that the two phenomena coexist and are connected at several points. The goals of the two phenomena are intertwined with compliance with other important requirements (environmental, labor law) besides the primary corporate goal.JEL Classification: G30; G39, M14
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Members of a supply chain and their relationships
131-134Views:207Today, companies do not compete individually on the market, but as members of a supply chain, delivering their goods or services to customers through shared collaboration. The main objective of the members in the chain is to satisfy customer needs, in the interest of which they cooperate in value adding processes. The main objective of the present study is to characterise the members of a supply chain, their relationship and to measure performance. The most relevant literature published on this topic states that investigation of the performance measurement in supply chains from the side of relationships is considered ‘uncharted territory’. However, the operation of a supply chain cannot be described without investigating its relationships.
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Board diversity and firm value; mediating effect of CSR of listed oil firms in Nigeria
Views:197In this empirical study, the mediating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the nexus between corporate value and board diversity is investigated. However, hypotheses developed for this study were tested with annualized panel dataset of eight (8) Nigerian listed oil and gas firms in the upstream sector spanning 2012 to 2019. Stakeholder theory was used to underpin the study. The study employed three indicators for board diversity (board professionalism, board nationality and board gender), Tobin’s Q and amount spent on CSR. The panel regression results show that looking at the indirect effect in Model One; board diversity has no significant effect on firm value. However, empirical findings indicated that CSR exerts a significant and positive relationship with corporate value. Considering Model Two, the results show that CSR plays a pertinent role in establishing the nexus between corporate value and board diversity, this finding is congruent with stakeholder theory. The study recommends that environmental sensitive firms should maintain an appropriate and balance diverse board as it plays a pertinent and significant role in establishing the nexus between stakeholder relationship and the firms, which can also serve as a mechanism to mitigate manager's opportunistic tendencies behind CSR investment.
JEL code: L95, M14, M41
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Impact of Terrorism on Agricultural Business in Borno State, Nigeria
117-124Views:243This study examines the impact of terrorism on agribusiness in Borno state. Terrorist activities in Borno state dates back to 2009 where a group of Islamic extremists popularly known as Boko Haram (meaning western education is a sin) became violent in their activities. The group operates significantly in north-eastern Nigeria where Borno state is located and since 2009. The presence of the group has led to collapse of socio-economic activities in Borno state among other states. Millions of people have been displaced fromtheir homes and forced to live in camps in neighbouring states. As a result, this study examines the impact of insurgency related activities on agribusiness in BornoState. Agricbusiness in Borno state can be measured using four different parameters, amount of area cultivated, annual crop production, rearing of livestock and fish farming. These are the major agricultural business residents of Borno state are engaged in. However due to unavailability of data, rearing of livestock and fish farming are dropped, thus focusing on area cultivated and annual crop production. As a result of these two variables, two models are developed. The first model measures the relationship between amounts of crop produced with insurgency related killings, while the second model measuresthe relationship between total areasof farmland cultivated with fatalities resulting from terrorist activity. This study employs Ordinary Least Squares methodology and finds that both relationshipsreveal negative results thus indicating statistically significant negative impact of terrorism on agribusiness in Borno State.
JEL Classification: Q10, Q18, Q12
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New venture creation – the influence of entrepreneurship education on students’ behavior (a literature – review based study)
147-153Views:290Entrepreneurship brings economic growth and development through the process of venture creation. These new business enterprises have a very important and positive impact on employment generation, poverty alleviation, and socio-economic development. Entrepreneurship education influences the attitude and behavior of students to form intentions of self-employability. We have analyzed the literature to clearly understand the relationship between entrepreneurship education and intentionality and the underlying mechanisms through which entrepreneurship education impacts intentions to start new ventures. By utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), we propose that entrepreneurship education increases students’ perceived entrepreneurial self-efficacy and perceived desirability for starting new ventures. Entrepreneurial self-efficacy and desirability in turn impact and increase students’ entrepreneurial intentions for creating new ventures. Entrepreneurship Education Programs (EEPs) focusing “Education for entrepreneurship” have more influence on intentionality through self-efficacy and desirability. Comparatively, EEPs concentrating on “Education about entrepreneurship” will have less impacts on the intentionality. The study has important theoretical and practical implications for researchers, academicians, policy makers and potential entrepreneurs – the students.
JEL. Code: A2, L6
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Systematic risk factors and stock return volatility
61-70Views:425This study analyzes the transmission of systematic risk exhaling from macroeconomic fundamentals to volatility of stock market by using auto regressive generalized auto regressive conditional heteroskedastic (AR-GARCH) and vector auto regressive (VAR) models. Systematic risk factors used in this study are industrial production, real interest rate, inflation, money supply and exchange rate from 2000-2014. Results indicate that there exists relationship among the volatility of macroeconomic factors and that of stock returns in Pakistan. The relationship among the volatility of macroeconomic variables and that of stock returns is bidirectional; both affect each other in different dynamics.
JEL code: C32, C58, G11, G12
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Green networks: Innovative capacity of SMEs in the Dutch greenhouse horticulture industry
43-50Views:148The Dutch greenhouse horticulture industry is characterized by world leadership in high-tech innovation. The dynamics of this playing field are innovation in production systems and automation, reduction in energy consumption and sharing limited space. However, international competitive advantage of the industry is under pressure and sustainable growth of individual enterprises is no longer a certainty. The sector’s ambition is to innovate better and grow faster than the competition in the rest of the world. Realizing this ambition requires strengthening the knowledge base, stimulating entrepreneurship, innovation (not just technological, but especially business process innovation). It also requires educating and professionalizing people. However, knowledge transfer in this industry is often fragmented and innovation through horizontal and vertical collaboration throughout the value chain is limited. This paper focuses on the question: how can the grower and the supplier in the greenhouse horticulture chain gain competitive advantage through radical product and process innovation. The challenge lies in time- to-market, in customer relationship, in developing new product/market combinations and in innovative entrepreneurship. In this paper an innovation and entrepreneurial educational and research programme is introduced. The programme aims at strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration between enterprise, education and research. Using best practice examples, the paper illustrates how companies can realize growth and improve the innovative capacity of the organization as well as the individual by linking economic and social sustainability. The paper continues to show how participants of the program develop competencies by means of going through a learning cycle of single-loop, double-loop and triple loop learning: reduction of mistakes, change towards new concepts and improvement of the ability to learn. Finally, the paper illustrates the importance of combining enterprise, education and research in regional networks, with examples from the greenhouse horticulture sector. These networks generate economic growth and international competitiveness by acting as business accelerators.
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Determinants of dividend payout policy: An empirical study of banking sector of Pakistan
101-106Views:378One good way to communicate financial performance of a bank to its shareholders is the payment of dividend. The present study is attempted to explore the influence of financial efficiency, safety, risk and profitability on dividend policy using panel data of 10 commercial banks listed at Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) for a period of 9 years between 2006 to 2014. The panel regression technique is used to analyze the data. The analysis shows a positive relationship of dividend payout ratio with safety and profitability in banking sector of Pakistan. The study identifies a negative association of dividend payout measure with financial efficiency and risk. The results show the statistically significant association of safety, risk and profitability with dividend payout ratio. Based on these findings it is concluded that safety, risk and profitability measures are relatively strong measures for defining dividend policy. The results are strongly indicating that safer the banks, the greater payout ratio the bank has. Moreover; banks with higher profitability and lower non-performing loans (NPLs) are believed to pay more dividends.
JEL code: G21, G23, G35
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EXPLORING THE NEXUS BETWEEN SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR AND ORGANIC FOOD PURCHASE: A Comprehensive Review
Views:103Recently, a remarkable increase in organic food consumption can been seen in both developed and developing countries. This research aims to identify the role of sustainable consumption behavior in purchasing organic food. The research problem has been formulated with several questions, most notably: Does sustainable consumption behavior has a role in purchasing organic food? The relationship between sustainable consumption behavior and organic food has received a lot of attention in the literature. However, take a comprehensive approach to examine how sustainable consumption behavior might affect purchasing organic food? In order to examine the role of sustainable consumption behavior in buying organic food, this article proposes a framework that adopts a comprehensive approach. The author conducted a qualitative synthesis of the literature (Systematic Literature Review (PRISMA), including 43 articles, revealing several findings. One of them, is that sustainable consumption behavior positively and directly impacts buying organic food due to the health, environmental cognition, high quality, trust, and food safety. The second finding is that complex factors influence organic food buying behavior. For example, price is always likely to be an important factor for most customers. Moreover, the lack of knowledge about organic food is another factor affecting customers’ buying organic food.
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The role of agribusiness in stimulating on-farm investments – case-study of the armenian dairy sector
85-91Views:121This paper analyses the impact on investments of contractual arrangements between farms and agribusiness in the Armenian dairy sector. Our empirical evidence is based on a unique survey of 300 Armenian dairy farms. The dairy sector is of particular importance as it provides vital employment and income, in an environment of weak social security and scarce job opportunities. Furthermore, milk production is predominantly organized in small-scale farms, which are most likely to be affected by adversarial financial conditions and limited in their opportunities to raise resources to invest. The results show that a large share of milk producers in Armenia is actively investing to upgrade their farm business. Furthermore, investment activity is not limited to large dairy farmers as over 30% of respondents with less than eight cows have made dairy-specific investments. We find that the linkages between farms and agribusiness – and more specifically the support programs that agribusiness firms offer to their suppliers – have been crucial in stimulating this restructuring process at the farm level. Interestingly, farmers with a more exclusive relationship to the buyer and farmers that deliver to more internationally oriented buyers are more likely to receive support. On the other hand, buyers that operate in a more competitive market are less likely to provide support to their suppliers. These findings have interesting policy implications. On the one hand, our results point to the gains that can be made from openness to international firms. On the other hand, the negative competition effect indicates that buyers are unable to enforce repayment of the provided farm services in an environment where a lot of buyers are competing for the same supply. Policy makers should look at ways of improving the enforcement capability of dairy companies under these circumstances.
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Changes in the Relationship Between ICT Use and Economic Development in EU Member States 2010-2016
91-100Views:197In this study, we examined some ICT indicators of the EU Member States between 2010 and 2016 based on data of the World Bank and Eurostat. We wanted to know, how can the EU Member States be grouped according to these indicators, and which group can Hungary belong to. With the help of international literature reviews, three indicators were chosen. According to these we created three groups (underdeveloped, developing, developed) with the K-Mean cluster method that is classified by their level of development. Interesting changes took place during the period under review. By the end of the analyzed period, six countries lost their “developed” rating among others some founding members. There were also interesting changes in the clusters. The value of some indicators increased more than 40% in some cases, surprisingly, only in one case measured reduction. The proportion of ICT specialists decreased in developing countries (by 1%). The highest growth rate was observed in the developed countries in e-commerce. Because of the high proportion of ICT professionals and the share of e-commerce in the developed cluster we assumed that service would be the dominant sector. The two-sample t-test did not confirm our hypothesis. We supposed the focus in developing countries will be on the industry, due we think the developed countries started to outsource their SSCs (shared service centers) to less developed countries. With the help of a statistical indicator, we confirmed our assumption, but the result not so convincing since the significant level is only 11%. Although we thought that the underdeveloped group of countries was based on agriculture, statistical studies did not support our hypothesis.
JEL Classification: O13, O14, O52
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Is there a kink in the happiness literature?
131-139Views:389One of the early key empirical findings of the happiness literature is that at higher levels of per capita real income there appears to be diminishing returns to income at least with regards to marginal changes in ‘happiness’ measured by various survey instruments. Although these results have been recently challenged, these earlier findings and the results of many contemporary studies suggest that an inelastic relationship exists between real per capita income and happiness after a relatively low threshold of per capita income is reached. Appling some of the results of prospect theory I argue that even if it were true that the marginal effect of income on happiness is zero, a reduction in income would probably reduce the level of happiness, yielding a kink in the ‘happiness curve’. Also, applying a target income approach to the happiness literature, one can argue that pursuing higher target income, in itself, is a means of increasing life satisfaction. These two theoretical instruments yield results consistent with some of the most recent empirical finding based on Gallup Poll Survey data. In addition, applying insights from the capabilities approach, I argue, that increasing income is a means of purchasing the capabilities to increase individual levels of happiness through the production of public goods, such as health care and education. A given marginal increase in income need not generate any increase in happiness if this income increase is highly unequally distributed in a population or is not used to purchase goods and services that contribute to increases in the level of happiness.
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Relationships between coping strategies and psychoactive substance use
102-108Views:208The study examines the relationship between coping strategies and smoking and alcohol consumption among athletes, recreational athletes and non-athlete individuals.
The factors examined were measured by a validated questionnaire version of Folkman-Lazarus (1980) (Ways of coping) (16 items) and asked about the smoking and alcohol consumption patterns of the respondents. The total sample number was 813 people, of whom 341 were athletes, 292 were recreational and 180 were non-athletes. 54.4% of the sample is female and 45.6% is male. In my research, I focused on mapping intrapersonal coping strategies among athletes, recreational athletes, and the non-athlete individuals, and explored gender differences. Furthermore, how smoking and alcohol consumption appear as a negative coping strategy in the measured sample.
As a method besides descriptive statistics the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to verify normality, and the hypotheses were tested with non-parameterized test (Kruskal-Wallis, and Mann-Whitney).
For coping strategies I found a significant difference among the non-, recreational and competitive athletes, and there is a significant difference between genders as well.
In the case of cognitive restructurings, there was a significant difference in favor of sports and recreational athletes versus non-athletes, while in problem analysis and passive coping I found a significant difference in favor of women compared to men.
Significant differences were also found in the case of psychoactive substance use. Among the three groups, as the intensity of sport increases, the number of smokers decreases. In the case of smoking, a significant difference was found in the coping strategies referring to reduction of the stress in the whole sample. In the case of alcohol consumption, in coping strategies were found significant differences between stress reduction, problem analysis and passive coping.
JEL CODE: M21, O21
ARTICLE IN PRESS!
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Medals and degrees: factors influencing dual career of elite student athletes at the University of Debrecen
93-98Views:179Career planning and goal setting play a significant role in the life of elite athletes gaining critical relevance during the overlapping years with university studies. As athletic career contain a necessary end and cannot serve as a profession for life, all athletes shall go through modification period in their professional lives. The athletic career shall come to an end and elite athletes need to find another profession for which they need to prepare as well. The specialities of this undertake is that the peak or the progressive cycle of athletic career often times overlap in time with high school and university studies. This definitely challenges those young athletes who made the decision to continue their studies at the university level beside their athletic careers. The objective of this study is to explore the main factors influencing the simultaneous realisation of studies and elite sport careers during university years. Part of a complex research approach on dual career in sport this study is aimed to gain information about methods of athletes for managing their dual tasks, the perceived relationship of student athletes to their peers, teachers and coaches, and their position on the relevant policy regulations provided by the university environment. Following the development of research instruments, data collection was conducted by focus-group interviews at the University of Debrecen among student elite athletes receiving sport scholarships (N=15). Level of success in sport, sport type (individual and team) and gender distribution was taking into account. The results shall contribute to the development of a future research instrument in a form of a questionnaire to assess aspects of dual career of athletes in case of larger samples.
JEL code: Z20
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POTENTIAL USES OF BLOCKCHAINS IN HUMAN RESOURCES
Views:37Blockchain technology offers businesses many opportunities for more efficient operation and safer data management. It also becomes easy tostore and share employee data, while the blockchain guarantees that it does not fall into unauthorized hands. The management of financial transactions and the automation of the payment process are also a great advantage for businesses, which can manage the payment of wages andbenefits more efficiently. Another area of application of blockchain technology is the creation of more efficient workflows that can improve productivity and reduce costs. The management of work schedules and optimized work processes will also be easier with the help of the blockchain, so businesses can become more efficient and effective. In this article, the relationship between HR and blockchains was explored through a meta-analysis based on available related publications.
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