Business Studies

HU ISSN 1588-9025 BUSINESS STUDIES A Publication of the University of Miskolc VOLUME 7, NUMBER 2. (2010) MISKOLC UNIVERSITY PRESS Editorial board: Sandor KARAJZ: Editor in Chief Institute of Economic Theories Tibor PAL Institute of Business Information and Methods György KOCZISZKY Institute of European Economics István PISKÓTI Institute of Marketing Mária ILLÉS Institute of Business Science Istvan SZINTAY Institute of Management Science E-mail: [email protected] University of Miskolc Faculty of Economics DEDICATION The economic crisis made the practitioners of economics face facts that can hardly be disregarded. It has become clear that new theories are needed to replace the ones prevailing so far. The belief in the autocracy of markets has failed, and the views on the monetary markets have to be grounded in new foundations. In this way the crisis affects not only our everyday lives, but the economic theoretical foundations as well. The neoclassical theory prevailing in the past three decades attracts more and more criticism. More and more experts voice the opinion that the current crisis is not only a consequence of the incompetence of greedy bankers and irresponsible politicians, but the theories on the basis of which the decisions were made are also to be blamed. Education in economics and in the theory of economics faces a change of paradigm. Therefore the responsibility of academics and researchers preparing the economic experts of the future for their tasks is not small. It is not inconsequential what approach and way of critical thinking they leave as inheritance to future generations. The Faculty of Economics of the University of Miskolc wishes to be involved in the change of paradigm to an extent commensurate with its weight, modest though it may be. The studies published in the volume were born in this spirit and aim at serving this purpose. Miskolc, October 2010 Prof. Dr. György Kocziszky Dean Business Studies, Volume 7, Number 2. (2010) pp. 3-14 ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES IN HUNGARY László Berényi PhD, assistant professor Institute of Management Science, University of Miskolc 1. PROVISORY MODELS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS Environmental consciousness can be defined as a behavioural approach of entities with higher regard for environmental and natural problems and for solving them [10]. In our opinion environmental consciousness is the indicator of the “quality” of decisions and actions. The quality in this definition means the presence of environmental interests and values. In my opinion two dimensions of environmental consciousness must be defined: • Individual dimension; • Organisational (corporate) dimension. Individual dimension contains the scale of values, the attitudes and the personality of people [14]. People choose from products and services which are more or less environmental friend, they make decisions on travelling by car or bus. They humanize their children, etc. Decisions of people as consumers have direct effect on enterprises: they must produce what the market wants. After all the consumer’s behaviour has effect on the environmental performance as well. On the other side the way of using products and services has various effects on the environment. There must be given special attention to organisational dimension. People are not only consumers but also producers of the goods and services. They work for the enterprise that produces the goods they will use [5]. Better results are probable if environmental consciousness will be demonstrated and learnt at job site. Organisational culture [2] means more then the sum of values and attitudes of the members. The organisation has relevant effect on the change of individual behaviour. This means that managing the organisation in a way which prefers environmental friendly solutions the development of consciousness may be accelerated. Theoretically it is quite easy to talk about environmental consciousness. But the practice is more difficult and in addition measurement is critical to do. Individuals do not have wide and authentic tools to measure the environmental performance. And there is significant difference between the verbal (enounced) and real (achieved) consciousness. Giving a definition of the content of environmental consciousness is difficult but many publications try to clear it in connection with product-development, organizational development and regional strategies as well. 3 ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES IN HUNGARY Maloney and Ward [13] give 4 component of environmental consciousness: factual knowledge in ecology, emotional perception for environmental problems, disposition to act, existed act. Researchers of the Corvinus University – based on other theories – mention 5 dimensions [15]: knowledge in ecology, environmental attitudes, environmental values, disposition to act, existed act. Being able to measure and develop the individual and organisational environmental consciousness parallel and of course in connection with each other 5 components can be outlined [20]: • knowledge; • attitudes and values; • supporting toolset; • disposition to act; • existed act (Figure 1.). AttitudesAttitudes KnowledgeKnowledge SupportSupport ValuesValues DispositionDisposition ActAct Figure 1 Components of environmental consciousness Source: Berényi: Environmental Management, 261.p. Knowledge has two co-ordinate parts. It contains the knowledge of the individuals and the organisation, as well. Individual knowledge means environmental and factual information of leaders (managers) and workers. Information about the status of the environment and effects of activity on the environment is important, for becoming able to optimise the environmental performance. Environmental information helps to answer the “What to do?” 4 László Berényi questions, whereas factual knowledge the “How to do?” questions. We must take up the difference in knowledge of leaders from workers. Both are important but it must be considered that the have different possibilities. Workers may have brilliant ideas, but they do not have any competent for doing changes. Leaders can do that. Organisational knowledge is not just a sum of the individual ones. We have to calculate upon synergic effects, too. Know-how descriptions, internal statistics and report, the solutions of IT-background, results of team-work etc. are examples for knowledge-elements, which arrive not directly from the individuals. Environmental management has many functions in connection with the knowledge: • Measuring the state of knowledge; • Discovering the fault and/or critical information and activity; • Harmonizing environmental and factual information; • Harmonizing leaders’ and workers’ information; • Building up and developing the knowledge-base. Attitudes and values are the “soft”, cultural elements of environmental consciousness. We can make a distinction between the leaders and workers values and attitudes from the point of view what kind of role they play in the organisation [6], [16], but there is a similarity, as well. Both leaders and workers make decisions. If one has alternatives to choose, the quality of the decision will depend on his/her scale of values. Of course if we talk about a well-structured, operative decision, the role of values (culture) is not so important. The equipment of the technocratic coordination can solve these problems [6]. But there are problems, which are not well-structured. Solving these problems there are not detailed instructions, the possible outputs are unknown. In this case the role of values is determinative. Attitudes and values are developable, environmental values can be plant into the mind of leader, workers and the whole organisation, as well. This process is called environmental domestication. Supporting toolset is the next key-element of working environment- consciously and being able to develop this way. The role of organisations is a critical point. I have hypothesised in my research that the quality of structural support of environmental consciousness is low at the moment, but organisations have considerable reserves. From this point of view the toolset can be divided into two parts: • Special environmental elements (e.g. greener production projects, standards for evaluating environmental performance, environmental impact-analysis); 5 ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES IN HUNGARY • Other elements for supporting problem-solving individually and by team-work (from the brainstorming-techniques to QMS in wide range); I believe that using up team-work techniques will help the organisations [21] to explore environmental problems and attitudes to them and to develop the environmental sensitivity of the human elements. The fourth element is the disposition to act. Disposition derives from knowledge, scale of values, attitudes and the structural aid. Disposition is good, but not enough. Environmental performance will gain just in case of concrete actions. Why is it not obvious that disposition is followed by actions? Shortly we can mention the economical-minded being of enterprises. Because of the favour of profit or in case of low interest of leaders and owners the fulfilment of environmental favours will be damaged. This means that there is another critical point. Building up an accurate interest-system is essential for becoming environmentally conscious. Disposition to act is a theoretical category. Practical measurement is limited. Building up and developing environmental consciousness is a process. In this process negative feedback has a very important role. Results of the actions

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