November and December 2018

At MGYOSZ / Business Hungary’s webpage we traditionally publish our e-bulletin, Magyar Gyáripar ten times yearly.

Our aim with the bulletin is to regularly inform the stakeholders of the Hungarian economy on the most important and current issues, first of all from the viewpoint of MGYOSZ’s member companies. In the November and December edition of 2018 we introduced  the results of the FAME project and published interviews on the project with the representatives of Budapest Business School, National Association of Family Businesses and Business Hungary.

October and November 2018

Budapest Business School organised the multiplier events of the FAME project both for Student and Family Businesses in October and November 2018.

Student workshops on 6 and 12 October in the framework of the Enterprise Development and the Finance/Accountancy Master courses – for 2nd year students. The project coordinator and the module leaders introduced the e-learning materials and all project results, and the students tested the e-learning modules and completed evaluation questionnaires and giving feedback for the developer teams.

BBS organised the first Family Business (FB) workshop together with the National Association of Family Businesses on 18 October 2018 at the monthly Club Day event of association. BBS organised the second FB workshop in the framework of a bigger event (titled: “Internationalization and Sustainability” – disseminating 3 parallel development programmes of BBS) on 21 November 2018. The project representatives introduced the project, its objectives, the implementation process and the achieved results and asked feedback from the participants.

Two other events of the Budapest Business School was also connected to the FAME project.

One was the ERASMUS Days 2018. BBS Joined the European ERASMUS Days 2018 with workshops focusing on ERASMUS Mobility and Strategic Partnership co-operations on 12-13 October, and the other was a large national Family Business conference and workshop organised by the Budapest LAB (Excellence Centre on Entrepreneurship of the Budapest Business School) on 28-29 November.

Partticipation at the RENT Conference in Toledo, Spain

The XXXIIth RENT conference organised by the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) took place in Toledo, Spain between 14-16th of November 2018. The title of the conference was ’Sustainable entrepreneurship: A win-win strategy for the future’ with the aim to bring together approximately 250 leading academics in this field who present and debate cutting edge research in a wide variety of entrepreneurship related topics. Representing the Hungarian FAME-team, Péter Csizmadia, Sára Csillag, Karina Szászvári and Anna Hidegh prepared a paper for the conference with the title of ‘Learn as if you were to life forever? Learning patterns in Hungarian SMEs’ which was selected for the poster session. The poster was exposed and presented by Péter during the conference. Based on the lessons learned from the FAME project the poster aimed at promoting the project results with a special emphasis on small firms HR development practices. The paper addressed three main questions: (1) What are characteristics of workplace learning in small firms? (2) What is the role of the owner/manager in constructing the learning environment in small businesses? (3) How do owner/managers utilize networks to support workplace learning in small businesses? The conference was a useful forum for receiving (mainly positive) feedback from the academic community concerning our results and also provided an excellent opportunity to extend the BBS’s professional network by popularising the FAME project.

Family Business Sustainability (FAME) Multiplier in Leeds (UK)

More than thirty manufacturing and service sector businesses attended a FAME project multiplier event hosted by Leeds Business School on 15^th November 2018.  The workshop considered productivity related performance in the context of small and medium sized family businesses.  Professor David Devins outlined a UK context where, on the one hand family businesses are seen as the backbone of a sustainable economy providing jobs for more than 12 million people and contributing more than £1.4 trillion to the UK economy.  However, on the other hand, family businesses are seen as contributing to an economy struggling to make productivity improvements with relatively low levels of management practice that have seen media reporting management practice in family firms as ‘awful’.

In response to this context and as a result of universities seeking to develop connections with the business community, the FAME project produced some innovative training materials.  These materials seek to support the development of knowledge and skills in relation to a range of areas including management, finance, governance and transition.  David provided an introduction to the modules that have been developed and he showcased the Small Business Management and Transition training materials.  Workshop participants had an opportunity to see the on-line learning materials and handbook, discuss the value of the resources, to provide initial feedback in a question and answer session and complete project evaluation questionnaires.  The results of the event will be used to inform the further development of the training materials and exploitation of the project in the future.

The fifth transnational partner meeting of the FAME project was organised in Budapest hosted by the coordinator Budapest Business School 8-9 November 2018.

Participation in the conference of Saint-Petersburg State University of Economics in 2018

From the 22^nd till the 24^th of October 2018 the XIII International Symposium about Intelligent Systems was held in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The symposium hosted several scholars from about 15 countries, involved in various fields of science, such as neurophysiology, physiology, biology and the application of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge technology, control theory and other basic sciences. A contributing author to Entrepreneurial Finance Module, Judit Sági, was participating in this symposium with a research paper, titled “Knowledge Company: Approaches to Assessing New Knowledge and Representation it to Society”. The paper, which examined the main approaches and methods for assessing new knowledge, and by how the corporate value is created, was written and presented together with Alzhanat E. Suleimankadieva and Valeria I. Pilipenco from Saint-Petersburg State University of Economics. It is not just an outcome of the research done through the FAME project, but also an outstanding opportunity to the future cooperation of the two universities. Judit Sági’s participation in the symposium, and the writing of the paper was financed by FAME.

October 2018

In October 2018 FAME project was promoted among entrepreneurs – owners of SMEs with growth potential – participants of  CEPOR’s “The SME Buyers’ Club” educational program. The program was developed based on the good European practice in education aimed on preparation of entrepreneurs for small business takeover. In Europe, sale of the company represents exit option for more than 40% of aging entrepreneurs who are planning their retirement. In Croatia, it is important to raise the interest of growing SMEs for taking over small businesses whose owners want to retire, especially in the cases when their children are not interested to continue family business and opt for different career path.

The results of FAME project were promoted among members of CEPOR's Assembly on annual meeting in December 2018.  Members or CEPOR's Assembly are representatives of  institutional founders of CEPOR: Institute of Economics Zagreb, J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek – Faculty of Economics in Osijek, Institute for International Relations Zagreb, Croatian Chamber of Economy, Croatian Chamber of Crafts and Trades, Development Agency Međimurje – Čakovec, IDA Istrian Development Agency – Pula, Center for Entrepreneurship Osijek.  CEPOR's participation in the project was highly rated as well as the project results.

1 October 2018

A validation of FAME training materials for FB representatives was conducted within a final conference of FAME project (a multiplier event). The conference "Contemporary Challenges for Family Firms" was organized jointly with Polish-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce in Kraków, at CUE campus (Rakowicka 27) on 1st October 2018.

The reason for merging those 2 events was a scarce availability of FB representatives: we have experienced this problem already during the INSIST project.

The conference and FB workshop has gathered 31 participants from family firms. The organization of the event was as follows: first, the project manager (Dr Jan Brzozowski) has presented the basic challenges for FB in Poland, showing the importance and relevance of FAME project. Then dr Hanna Kelm has presented the basic materials from FAME project: printed textbooks have been circulated in the audience, and the e-learning materials have been displayed on the screen and commented. After this short (ca. 1 hour) presentation, the workshops followed.

There were 2 workshops: one more practical with Tomasz Żybula, director of PL-UA Chamber of Commerce (Legal changes and new trends on Polish market: challenges to FB // Zmiany prawne i nowe trendy na rynku polskim: wyzwania dla firm rodzinnych) and the second using FAME teaching materials from Module Transitions Issues (Is it worth to formalize the structure of family firm? //Czy warto formalizować strukturę firmy rodzinnej?). The second workshop included a short introduction and training using role-playing activities (exercise taken from Transition Issues on conflict-solving within FB).

After those 2 workshops the participants were finally asked to fill the questionnaires to evaluate the teaching materials. The questionnaires were prepared in Polish language, and all the lectures & workshops were also prepared in polish, as many of the participants (FB representatives) did not know English. The grading was very favourable (see the results of the evaluation available online), and the main negative comments were about the lack of availability of materials in Polish language. It is worth to note that albeit this comment is important, the basic construction of the project did not enable us to prepare teaching materials in Polish, as the partners did not have funds for the national translations.

TCA - Transnational Cooperation Activities in Lodz, Poland

26-28 September 2018

László Varga, coordinator of the FAME project by Budapest Business School participated in the TCA - Transnational Cooperation Activities in Lodz (organised by the Polish ERASMUS+ Agency) in September 2018. It was a 2 days conference and workshop titled “Innovate your teaching through methods like gamification, e-learning, Design Thinking, Project Based Learning, use of new technologies in higher education”. It was a great opportunity to introduce the FAME project and its e-learning development methods and materials to more than 50 participants from 15 countries and a great event for networking and discussing the follow-up opportunities of the project.

FAME at the 13^th Enterprise Educators Conference, Leeds Beckett University, UK

5-7 September 2018

Leeds Beckett University was delighted to host the 13^th Enterprise Educators UK Conference at the Rose Bowl in Leeds. More than three hundred delegates from all corners of the globe enjoyed connecting, contributing, participating and networking with participants with a range of interests associated with promoting Enterprise Education in Higher Education and other learning contexts.  Brian Jones and David Devins convened a session to consider curriculum design and development issues associated with small family businesses.  The session drew extensively on the experiences of the Erasmus funded FAME project and encouraged participants to consider the implications of the family business context for curriculum.  It provided an opportunity to showcase the online learning materials developed in the project and encouraged participants to provide constructive feedback. 

The 5^th edition of the European SME Transfer Summit took place on the 17^th and 18^th May 2018, in the Chamber of Commerce in Luxembourg. The event was co-organized by the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce and TRANSEO, the European Association for SME Transfer, and in partnership with the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy, the Société Nationale de Crédit d’Investissement (SNCI), Sowacess and the Walloon government. The Summit was a key event for the Business Transfer network in Europe and brought together over 50 international speakers and around 200 participants representatives of the main regional organizations working on the issue of business transfer.

The goal of the Summit was to pursue efforts of entrepreneurs towards easier and more efficient business transfers and to encourage the participants to exchange and learn from European experts and policy representatives about matters such as business transfer, entrepreneurship, growth and scale up, family business succession planning, strategic acquisitions, cross-border transactions, financing schemes, etc.

Mirela Alpeza, director of CEPOR - SMEs and Entrepreneurship Policy Center from Croatia, member of TRANSEO, participated on the Summit. As a moderator of the workshop Business transfer ecosystems – developing Action plans to support business transfers: key ingredients Mirela informed the Summit participants about the objectives and expected outcomes of FAME project that CEPOR is participating as a partner.

On 15-17 May 2018 Hanna Kelm from Cracow University of Economics, Faculty of Economics and International Relations, Department of the European Studies, took part in the 8th ‘Family Businesses’ Scientific Conference, organized by the University of Social Sciences in Łódź, Poland. She was presenting her article: „Are Women in Family Business Supported Enough by the Polish Family Policy?”. This article is a part of FAME (Family Business Sustainability and Growth) Project. ERASMUS+ KA2 Strategic Partnership 2016-1-HU01-KA203-022930

Link to the publication:

http://piz.san.edu.pl/index.php?id=221

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