Search

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed enormous pressure on healthcare systems. In the first line of the "war" against the virus, hospitals tried to maintain their general operations, while supplementing their services with COVID-19 patient care. To tackle the new difficulties, hospitals had to develop strategic response plans, and were in need of finding the most effective management structure for their institution. The focus of this paper is the aforementioned management structures. After overviewing the international literature, we identified three different approaches and we named them the Horizontal, Vertical, and Intermedier Approach. The separation is based on the following features: decision making, information distribution, command forwarding, intra-hospital communication channels, hierarchy, and control. After summarizing the international experiences, we introduce a Hungarian centrum hospital's approach, as the institution was assigned to fulfil COVID-19 centrum hospital duties in the middle of the first wave. The North-Buda Szent János Central hospital was in need of restructuring their management structure, and the leadership decided to transform it into a hierarchical, vertical structure, operating with centralized decision making and personal control. This control–command system idea came from the hospital's Internist Head Coordinator Physician, who is the first author of our article, and had serious military medicine experiences (in Afghanistan). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper summarizes and provides and overview on the economic and social processes influencing and supporting the successful management of settlements, focusing on Hungary. The role of leadership and settlement management is inevitable in the everyday operation as well as in the definition and realization of development concepts and strategies. The basis of stable operation and development is the financial independency and stability, thus we need to call the attention on the importance of economic development functions of settlements as well as on the important role of mayors and leaders in the economic and spatial development. The approaches, the ideas as well as the way how the leaders think are all determining factors in development. Nowadays, settlement development and regional economic development raise such key issues that are also the main research questions in our paper, like „What does a good municipality/a good settlement look like? How can 'good' be described?" What are the main characteristics of a suitable leader in the case of settlements? It is known that there are no targeted trainings, courses for mayors/heads of municipalities to prepare them to be good leaders, there are no nationally or internationally acknowledged skills, competences that could be applied to select the most suitable leaders for the positions. Therefore, we believe that we must call the attention to this shortage and motivate the experts in public administration, the researchers and scientists, as well as trainers and coaches to cooperate and work on the solution. In this paper, through the dimension of leadership/management, we intend to discover the characteristics of successful community leaders and to focus on the importance of the activities of 'local heroes', who prove to have strong commitment to the development of settlements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to noncompliance with the EU's fundamental values such as democracy and the rule of law in Hungary and Poland, the EU Commission has established the Justice Scoreboard, the Rule of Law Framework and the Rule of Law Mechanism. Moreover, the Commission has proposed linking the disbursement of funds to respect for the rule of law (Rule of Law conditionality). However, the deployment of these measures has not restored compliance. Drawing on the two dominant approaches in compliance studies, the management approach and the enforcement approach, this paper argues that with the exception of Rule of Law conditionality, the Commission's tools are characterized by a mismatch between the causes of the problems identified and the solutions chosen. Instead of sanctioning voluntary noncompliance, they rely on soft measures, which are recommended in cases of involuntary noncompliance, but which are not suitable in cases of deliberate noncompliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a defining technology of the 21st century, creating new opportunities for academic libraries. The goal of this paper is to provide a much-needed analysis, interpreted in an international context, on what the leaders of academic libraries in East-Central Europe, and specifically in Hungary, think about AI and its implementation in a library setting. The survey shows that according to library directors AI is more of an opportunity for academic libraries than a threat, and it could provide support in all areas of library operation, including digitising, information service, and education. Findings indicate that a quarter of the Hungarian academic libraries surveyed use AI-supported solutions, mostly in the areas of information retrieval and data processing. Using Rogers (The diffusion of innovations. 5th ed. The Free Press, 2003) diffusion of innovation model, it may be projected that an explosive growth is to be expected in the use of AI in libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective and efficient operation of public healthcare systems is more and more important as a consequence of the increasing amount of money spent on their operation. For this reason, accurate and science-based efficiency information is needed for managers and healthcare policy makers. The evaluation of the efficiency in this sector is particularly difficult because several measures and indicators are used. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) can provide aggregate and overall measures of efficiency. The purpose of this paper is the examination of the efficiency of in-patient rehabilitation units curing musculoskeletal disorders in Hungary. The research presented focuses on rehabilitation units which attend to patients recovering from stroke or other acquired brain injuries. Output-oriented, slack-based DEA models are applied for the evaluation of in-patient rehabilitation units using data of a national survey. The novelty of the method presented is the consideration of the change in patients' functional status when efficiency is evaluated using DEA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the research is to reveal the opinion of regional professionals involved in the management of sustainable tourism and its three pillars. Through the results of 27 in-depth interviews with decision-makers and NGOs, we have explored the perceptions of the economic, environmental and social factors, both positive and negative, and the importance of each factor. The analysis of the results clearly shows a difference of opinion between decision-makers and NGOs. The negative impacts of tourism were highlighted by respondents, mainly in terms of the impact on the natural and economic environment, however, the positive impacts were more prominent. The research showed that the impacts on social environment were perceived more positively by respondents, and NGOs did not emphasise negative impacts in this category. The study shows that the role of tourism management in nature conservation areas is necessary and important for sustainable tourism development. The research clearly demonstrates that sustainability is an important issue in tourism. The results of the research also show that decision-makers are not familiar with the concept of sustainability, its precise content and their preparation and knowledge are insufficient to make the right decisions on the subject. The research shows that there is a shortage of professionals with expertise in tourism management, which makes it difficult to implement coordinated tourism development in the area under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]