In keeping with the comprehensive educational and...

In keeping with the comprehensive educational and organisational restructuring under way at the university, in 1992 an independent Futures Research Department was established in the Faculty of Economic Sciences, only to be transformed in 2000 into the Futures Studies Centre at the Faculty of Business Administration.

The Futures Studies Centre of the University of Economic Sciences has benefited, in the shape of the Futures Research Group , from the intellectual and financial support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 1974. The research team was headed until the end of 1998 by university professor Géza Kovács and subsequently by university professor Erzsébet Nováky , who is also head of the Futures Studies Centre.

The Department of Philosophy of the Budapest Technical University has kept an open mind toward the future amid all the organisational restructuring. Cultivating and teaching futures research have always been in close harmony with the university’s profile and have adhered to the changes in the thematic points of view of the research centre.

As a consequence of the implemented university reforms, it is now the Department of Innovation Studies and History of Technology that deals with the future in a systematic way under the guidance of Mrs. Attila Tóth . The research work of the Semmelweis University of Medicine was transferred to the Institute of Social Sciences of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party and, subsequently, to the Economic and Social Research Institute of the Trade Unions.

The work was carried on by Erzsébet Gidai in the Institute of Social Research and Forecasting. Futures research at the Janus Pannonius University of Pécs acquired a specific character early on. The activity of Béla Sipos focussed on forecasting the future of business, labour and prices, and on examining and forecasting short and long-range cycles. In the 1990’s they established a research team at the Strategic Management Department and began to focus on computer-assisted financial forecasting.

The Department of Business Economics of the University of Miskolc specialised in company and organisation prognostics ( János Czabán ), while the Department of Statistics and Accountancy focussed on business prognostics ( Lajos Besenyei ). The Institute of Economic Sciences of the University of West Hungary (in Sopron) has also been dealing with futures studies since the mid-90s.