Terepkutatás a magyar gazdaságban – tudományos konferencia, 2012. november 16–17., Budapest, International Business School

The Institute of Economics, Center for Regional and Economic Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (KRTK MTA) and the International Business School, Budapest (IBS) convened a two-day conference on field research in the Hungarian economy. The conference was designed to bring together experts from economics, political science, business studies, sociology and anthropology, from Budapest and a number of large Hungarian universities and research centers to present their latest research based on field research methodology.  The conference consisted of seven sessions and the keynote speaker was Attila Chikán, from Budapest Corvinus University. The keynote speaker, Attila Chikán presented methodological groundings of his famous competitiveness studies and discussed issues of technical and methodological difficulties in carrying on a decade old project.  The sessions covered issues from large firm behavior in Hungary, small and medium size enterprises, Hungarian entrepreneurs’ attitude, national champion research, and methodological discussions. Each session was structured with four-five presenters, followed by a discussant and a short question and answer period. The discussants included Annamária Inzelt, László Szerb, György Lengyel, Pál Valentiny, Pál Juhász and Iván Major. The organizers Dóra Piroska (IBS) and Mihály Laki (KRTK MTA) concluded that the conference showed the strength and weaknesses of field research in Hungary. Among the strength they mentioned the business and policy relevance of researches, the high quality research designs and careful methodological conducts of researchers, but also pointed to the weaknesses such as lack of sufficiently developed theoretical underpinnings of some researches and the dangers involved in contributing to international research networks.