HU
The University of Technology has, from the very start, incorporated the study of economics and management in its educational curriculum. At the institution, then known as the Royal Palatine Joseph University of Technology and Economics (1934-1948), it was Róbert Kuntner, Móricz Kelemen, Farkas Heller and their successors who began the professional education of engineers and economists. Our department was established as the Department of Planned Business Economics in 1949, under Prof. István Harsányi, after the University of Economics was established as a separate institution. Subsequent heads of Dept. include professors János Fáth, László Ladó, Zoltán Boross and János Kövesi. The current head of Dept. is Noémi Kalló.
In the 1950s, we commenced postgraduate training in engineering economics at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. In the 1960s, our department was renamed the Dept. of Industrial Business Management, and in the 1970s we started a graduate degree course in production systems at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, a graduate major in management at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, and postgraduate education in engineering management at the Faculty of Electric Engineering. In the 1980s, renamed again as the Dept. of Business Management and Economics, we launched specialized engineering courses in quality control, industrial design, and value engineering. Several students also completed their PhD studies in our department at this time. Our department was among the first to be selected by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences as a research institution with fellowship funds for young researchers. It was with their help, too, that we established our highly successful Student Council for Advanced Management Studies, and the Academy also established an R&D institute attached to our department.
In the 1990s, we changed our name again, becaming the Department of Industrial Management and Business Economics. We launched MBA courses first in English, followed by MBAs in French and Hungarian, in cooperation with such illustrious American and Western European universities as the Rochester Institute of Technology, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Sloan School of Management, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, the Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, the University of California, Berkeley, the Haas School of Business, or the Universität Karlsruhe, Fakultät für Wirtschaftswissenschaften.
With the support of USAID, an American-Hungarian TQM Center of Excellence was established at our department in 1993, which has since built a national network to promote TQM. We also played a central role in launching an engineering management degree programme in 1996, and joined several graduate and postgraduate educational initiatives at the University of Technology. We were leading proponents of establishing a PhD programme in engineering management, played a central role in having the programme accredited, and participated in launching a PhD programme at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, as well. Between 1998 and 2011, our faculty members served on the editorial board of the Hungarian edition of the Harvard Business Review.
We also played a seminal role in the establishment of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences in 1998. We also played a key role in the Bologna process, i.e. in launching BSc/BA as well MSc/MA programmes in line with the newly adopted European standards. At present, our department is in charge of the BSc and MSc programmes in Engineering Management, the MA programme in Marketing, the MA programme in Management and Leadership, as well as our joint MBA programme and MA programme in Business Administration and Management together with the Department of Finance.
Heads of the Department:
dr. Noémi Kalló (2017-2019)
dr. János Kövesi (1994-2017),
dr. Zoltán Boross (1986-1994),
dr. László Ladó (1978-1986),
dr. István Harsányi (1965-1978),
dr. János Fáth (1953-1965),
dr. István Harsányi (1949-1953).
