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This article summarizes survey findings from a recent study that examined how Hungarian companies of different sizes from different business fields responded to the unexpected, disruptive changes caused by the pandemic, and whether they used organizational learning to design a more adaptive and resilience enhancing business model.

The survey was conducted via questionnaires and sent out to a selected group of business leaders of larger enterprises in receipt of state financial support. The survey focused on finding out whether using the fund was accompanied by internal learning. Interviews were also held with small businesses from a randomly selected sample to evaluate the difference in business behavior in companies of different sizes.

The first observation was that it is the value system, personal goals and level of future orientation of the top leaders, rather than the size or field of activity of the business, that determines whether organizational learning is a general practice. Second, smaller businesses may be unable to define “organization learning,” but they are more agile and forward looking. Third, in the sample of larger businesses it was more typical to find top-down decision-making and less interest in creating a learning culture.

This survey covered different sized businesses, using both questionnaire and interview-based information gathering, about the impacts of the pandemic on organizational learning practices. It offers original observations that may be interesting for researchers of the field, and also for practitioners in any country.

Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) are the backbone of economies. They employ about 70 percent of the working age population and produce on average about half of new value-added. Self-employed micro’s are a special segment of the MSME population. They are either the typical service providers or the new start-ups, later becoming rapidly growing gazelles. It is therefore very important that the majority of these businesses survive crises. There are plenty of suggestions about what governments should do to help, but what should MSMEs themselves do, not only for survival but also for a successful future? This is the topic of this article.

The article is based on international research findings and the long-time professional experience of the author on the operations of the MSME sector in an international context.

MSMEs can survive and even thrive on challenges created by sudden crisis situations, like a pandemic, if they have a proactive managerial mentality and also diverse professional knowledge, often called intellectual capital. There are well-known, but perhaps now neglected, management techniques which can support this combination of short and long run orientation, including future building aspirations. Combined they can enhance the intellectual capital stock of business, serving as a springboard for future sustainable success.

Crisis situations do not happen – fortunately - too often. Therefore. experiments about how to handle them, especially in the MSME sector are not extensively available. This paper suggests a tool-set which might be especially useful not only for handling crisis situations, but also for improving chances for lasting business success.

Introduction The Hungarian economic reform in 1968 was a departure from the centralised, autocratic economic and political system which existed prior to that time. In the old system, those at the different levels of the power structure were absolutely self‐confident about their ability and right to determine what was good for everybody else. They were not interested in the opinions of their subordinates, especially when those opinions concerned poor decision making at higher levels. Human resources were badly managed, and knowledge and skills were misused. This resulted in a lack of commitment by subordinates and also in a lack of interest in doing the right things. Those lacking power and responsibility were depressed with their work and held little hope for future improvement. They were not motivated to improve their performance in the absence of clear, honest performance‐oriented incentive and promotion systems. Personnel departments were more concerned about the political reliability of the people in a company than about their capabilities and skills and the match of these with the company's future plans. Alienation of people, along with dissatisfaction, could have been tapped if anyone had been interested in coping with these problems, which contributed considerably to the growing incompetence in managing the economy and the companies in the changing environment of the '60s. There appeared to be no way out of the crisis other than decentralisation; getting more people involved in decision making and problem solving.

In the rapidly changing, increasingly uncertain environment the quality of leadership will be the key to business long-term success. The focus will be on the so-called soft skills: humanity, cooperation, social responsibilitiy, ethical behaviour, flexibility, conflict handling and trust building. But how can these skills be acquired?

They can most easily be learned through a long-term socialisation process. Family values and early childhood positive education experiences can be the bedrock for developing these skills or human attitudes. Mentors and role models are also very helpful for their continuous development.

Interviews with a Hungarian sample of organisational leaders prove these skills cannot be learned in a typical business school which concentrates on managerial techniques for individual competitiveness. In addition, in a society where political connections hold high importance, it is not easy to succeed just based on the earlier-mentioned leadership skills. The leaders indicated that it is also important to keep good connections with the country’s political leaders. The environmental, political and social system, societal cultural values are also influencing factors as expressed by the interviewed leaders.

Any development experiences to support leaders must, therefore, take into account the culture of the society in which they live, the context of their organisation and the background of each individual leader. These experiences must also provide opportunities for leaders to learn over time, with others, to continuously reflect on mistakes, change and develop. These are the leaders who will succeed in the long term.

The purpose of this paper is to find out whether any relationship can be found among learning orientation, learning culture in general and innovation achievements in SMEs.

In‐depth research based on questionnaires and interviews was carried out. The sample was analyzed using multivariable correlation.

It is found that to the majority of SMEs innovation means product or technology innovation, and only a negligible minority think about management‐related innovation. There are few SMEs who encourage learning and act upon building a learning culture, but those who do are far more innovative than the rest. Those with a low interest in learning and building a learning culture perform poorly in innovation.

International comparison would have been useful, especially in the region.

The research has proved that an encouraging external environment and a supporting internal environment are equally important for successful innovation in SMEs. Therefore the government and the EU in general should support SMEs' innovation more successfully, and SMEs should put more emphasis on learning, knowledge creation and building of a learning culture.

For societies suffering from a high unemployment rate it is crucial to find sources for job creation. Innovative SMEs can be the best sources for new jobs.

The importance of learning, learning culture and knowledge creation for innovation in SMEs has been proved.

The purpose of this article is to see how companies from different fields try to cope with the consequences of the economic crisis.

Managerial approaches were analyzed. Members of the top management teams in 15 enterprizes were interviewed.

The macro and micro environments of these firms were found to be very similar, but the decisions they were making were very different. It was found that the differences in strategic approaches could be explained mostly by the attitudes and values of the top management team.

The author uses her experience in research on relationships among organisational learning, innovation, managerial values and business to describe the key differences of the two companies, who are both Hungarian owned.

The objective of this paper is to test whether the observations of foreign managers about the low mobility level of the Hungarian workforce can also be verified on a sample drawn from among young professionals. Second the paper aims to prove that a low mobility level is not necessarily a disadvantage for the economy in which small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) are playing a significant role in creating new jobs.

The paper uses a questionnaire, which is based on the mobility pyramid developed by Quelch and Bloom, to survey two groups of students in two institutions.

The paper finds a strong correlation between the observations of foreign managers and the opinions of the participants in the samples. Although the sample size is not too large, the arguments of the students about why long‐term and far‐away foreign assignments are not very desirable for them are powerful and convincing. They prove how slowly society characteristics are changing.

The present low mobility level corresponds with the earlier Hofstede's findings on Hungary being a strong uncertainty avoidance society. However in the paper's view the low mobility is not necessarily a disadvantage, as people still can continuously learn, create new knowledge and strengthen local social capital, which are all important ingredients of national competitiveness.

The aims of the research behind the paper are to understand better the present situation of the problem of going from training to learning and to try to suggest methods and solutions to improve the situation.

The author uses her experience in teaching cross‐cultural management and interviews with top executives to find out how some typical cultural factors influence management practices and employee behavior.

The key findings of the paper are the following: cultural factors play a great role in how companies are managed and people in them handled: controlled and motivated. But it looks like there is another important group of factors that influence all these managerial elements: this is the economic and political situation of any country. In the case of Hungary, which is a cheap production site for global and multinational companies, managers manage, control and motivate differently than for example “at home”, in a highly developed country.

Further research on a larger sample is needed to support the ideas mentioned in the article better.

One implication could be to write a professional textbook on the topic. A further one is to put together a proposal for the government in order to focus the attention on the importance of learning in all kinds of institutions and at all levels. One practical result of the findings is these are already being taught by the author thorugh the international management courses for foreign students studying at the Corvinus University in Budapest.

The paper presents a research approach of trying to find relationships between cultural factors and learning approaches and philosophies. It can be of value for those interested in cross‐cultural research, and also for companies interested in finding the best approaches to learning in a particular society.