The workshop commenced on Monday afternoon with a visit to Audi Hungaria. During a Welcome Dinner in the evening, at the Famulus Hotel, introductions and opening speeches were made by Prof. Dr Gyula Vastag DSc, Director of the Management PhD Programme at Széchenyi István University and Prof. Dr József Popp, Professor of Economic Sciences at the University of Debrecen.

Other guest speakers at the main event on Tuesday morning included Dr Fikret Čaušević, Professor of Economics and International Finance at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Dr Nigel Caldwell, Associate Professor in Logistics at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK; Dr Tamás Dusek, Professor at Széchenyi István University, Győr and Editor-in-Chief of Statisztikai Szemle and Dr Peter Kelle, Professor of Decision Sciences at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA.

The rationale behind the workshop was to support PhD students in their research and thesis writing, firstly by highlighting current areas of interest and new approaches in Economics and Management which PhD students could further investigate as potential research areas and, secondly, to give them an insight into issues surrounding the submission of research articles for publication by professional journals. 

Entitled “Burning issues in Transdisciplinarity and Management,” the first session was presented by Dr Čaušević and Dr Caldwell. Dr Čaušević’s contribution centred on the reasons why transdisciplinarity, the overlapping of different sciences and disciplines, has now become such a crucial issue in economics. He went on to emphasize how it was vital to re-think Economics since growth is as much a political, as an economic choice.                             

Dr Fikret Čaušević	Dr Nigel Caldwell

The core of Dr Caldwell’s presentation was an exposition of a series of tensions in the field of management: local versus global production, mature economics versus emerging economics, as well as a brief investigation into the concept of authenticity, the discussion of which was designed to stimulate PhD students in their identification of worthwhile research areas. Encouraging them to identify tensions, to look for and to positively embrace paradoxes, Dr Caldwell advised selecting subjects to work on with readily available data.

“Meeting the Editors”, the theme of the morning’s second session, was organized in the form of a round table discussion, facilitated by three prominent editors of Management/Economics journals. The main speakers were Dr Dusek (Statisztikai Szemle), Dr Kelle (International Journal of Production Economics) and Dr Vastag (Decision Sciences, Pannon Management Review). The editors outlined the characteristics of their prospective journals as well as controversial issues relevant to the acceptance of papers. Prospective doctoral authors were subsequently offered a host of useful publishing tips.

Dr Tamás Dusek	Dr Peter Kelle	Dr Gyula Vastag

The afternoon programme consisted of Student presentations. Three doctoral students presented their individual research work within the specialization of Transdisciplinarity and Management: Katalin Darabos spoke about her research work into the topic of family businesses, Zoltán Dobra talked about his empirical study of human/ machine interaction and Enikő Varga outlined her research into methods of knowledge acquisition in a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) era with specific reference to organic farming.

Participants of the workshop included doctoral students of management from Győr, for whom attendance was a requirement, as well as students from the Károly Ihrig Doctoral Programme of Management and Business at the University of Debrecen.