QUEST FOR THE WAYS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: REVALUATION OF THE ROLE OF ORGANISATIONAL INNOVATIONS - PART ONE

Since the second half of the 1990s, both academics and policy makers are devoting special attention to the growing impacts of the interplay between technological and social-organisational innovations on the adaptability of the national economies. The first part of the paper reviews the various approaches related to the innovation and present and assess the modernization performance of the Hungarian economy and stress its asymmetric or imbalanced character. The authors are evaluating the generally weak and unequal innovation performance of the firms (e.g. product, process innovations and working time flexibility), especially of the Hungarian owned companies. In preparing the empirical investigation of the organisational innovations, the authors make distinction between various types of organisational innovations (i.e. incremental, modular, architectural and radical) and identify the key features of the learning organisation which are playing vital role in developing and maintaining the innovation capacity of the firms. The second part of the paper - which is foreseen to be published in the second half of 2008 - is presenting and assessing the results of a pilot-survey carried out on sample of more than 500 firms in 2006. This survey is aimed at identifying and evaluating the intensity and the extent of organisational changes/innovations, the forms and degree of the employees' participation and the source, forms and development of the knowledge base in the firms surveyed.