The Budapest Institute of Sociology (ISB) is affiliated to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), which is the highest and most prestigious scientific institution in Hungary. Like all other institutes of the HAS, it functions as a non-profit public organisation. The director of research at the Institute, Csaba Makó, who will manage the STILE work in EU applicant countries, also holds professorships at the institute of Management Education, at St. István University in Budapest and at the Department of Management and Organisation of Budapest University of Economics and Public Administration, thus ensuring that the work is able to draw from a broad range of skills and expert knowledge.

ISB has a strong tradition of comparative research in international project teams, having worked with a range of partners in Europe, North America and Japan. It has an established relationship with FORBA in Austria (a partner in EMERGENCE), with whom it has collaborated in the past and with the Autonomous University of Barcelona (a subcontractor in EMERGENCE) where professor Makó has been a visiting professor. The institute will bring several unique assets to the STILE team. These include a strongly interdisciplinary approach to company case-study work, a well-grounded body of knowledge on the rapidly changing situation in Central and Eastern European labour markets during the transition process, and a comparative framework, which encompasses both Japan and North America.

Some recent research projects of direct relevance include ‘Firm-level Labour Relations in an International Comparative Perspective’, ‘Comparing Management Style and Labour Process: roles of Multinationals and Indigenous Firms’ and ‘Regional Innovation Systems in Comparison: Eleven Countries Project’, supported by DG XII’s TSER Programme.