In the EU-27 countries, the importance of social sustainability of digital transformation (SOSDIT) is heightened by the need to balance economic growth with social cohesion. By prioritizing SOSDIT, the EU can ensure that its citizens are not left behind in the digital transformation process and that technology serves the needs of all Europeans. Therefore, the current study aimed firstly to evaluate the SOSDIT of EU-27 countries and then to model its importance in reaching sustainable development goals (SDGs). The current study, using structural equation modeling, provided quantitative empirical evidence that digital transformation in Finland, the Netherlands, and Denmark are respectively most socially sustainable. It is also found that SOSDIT leads the countries to have a higher performance in reaching SDGs. Finally, the study provided evidence implying the inverse relationship between the Gini coefficient and reaching SDGs. In other words, the higher the Gini coefficient of a country, the lower its performance in reaching SDGs. The findings of this study contribute to the literature of sustainability and digitalization. It also provides empirical evidence regarding the SOSDIT level of EU-27 countries that can be a foundation for the development of policies to improve the sustainability of digital transformation. According to the findings, this study provides practical recommendations for countries to ensure that their digital transformation is sustainable and has a positive impact on society.

The purpose of this study was to model the impact of mentoring on women’s work-life balance. Indeed, this study considered mentoring as a solution to create a work-life balance of women. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews with both mentors and mentees of Tehran Municipality were conducted and the collected data were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory. Findings provided a model of how mentoring affects women’s work-life balance. According to this model, role management is the key criterion for work-life balancing among women. In this model, antecedents of role management and the contextual factors affecting role management, the constraints of mentoring in the organization, as well as the consequences of effective mentoring in the organization are described. The findings of this research contribute to the mentoring literature as well as to the role management literature and provide recommendations for organizations and for future research.

This study aimed to empirically investigate resource-based and dynamic capability theories in startup failures, categorize factors that contributed to failures, and study the gender effect on startup failure. Data consists of 40 information and communication technology startups in the voluntary liquidation phase. The questionnaire technique was developed based on SHELL model. Research questions were investigated using principal component analysis, Ward’s hierarchical cluster, and cross-table analysis. The main identified groups of startup failure factors are mostly dynamic capabilities, supporting dynamic capability over a resource-based view. The lack of dynamic capabilities is clearly identifiable in one subgroup of failed startups. The relevance of some failure factors changes with the life cycle of startups. This study found a positive relationship between the presence of female founders and the startup survival. Besides, it highlights the importance of innovation and corporate foresight training programs, mentorship access, and the need to strengthen project screening standards by focusing more on dynamic capabilities. This study underpins the necessity to develop policies easing the gender gap. These would improve the efficiency of the startup ecosystem and entail positive social effects.

This article provides an overview of the regulatory environment of the Hungarian system of local self-government based on the methods of legal dynamics and economic analyses in a historical perspective tracing events back to the aftermath of World War II. The starting point of the analysis is 1947, the launching of soviet type command economy in Hungary. Next is a detailed study of the regulation and evolution of local self-government since its beginnings in the early 1990s following the change of regime, with a brief international outlook on the post-soviet countries surrounding Hungary. In our economic analysis, emphasis is placed on the period following Hungary’s accession to the European Union, a period that held out considerable opportunities for Hungarian local self-governments, but ultimately evolved into bankruptcy. The article presents detailed reasons for the atypical nature of Hungarian local self-government indebtedness and the factors underlying this unfavourable process. Further on, the procedure of debt consolidation and the essential elements of the new regulatory environment created after 2011 are described. In a brief international comparison, debt portfolio developments are analysed through the examples of Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic as analogue Central European countries, in order to provide further proof of the atypical financial management of Hungarian local self-governments, i.e. non-compliance with the rules and the not always solid budgetary discipline. The focus of the research underlying this paper is the impact the Hungarian regulation of self-governments had on the financial sustainability of local self-governments’ financial management. The study confirmed the initial hypothesis that the business management rules set out with insufficient prudence, deficiencies in the control system, and excessive borrowing in foreign exchange led to bankruptcy of a number of local self-governments and consequently jeopardised the proper provision of public services.

This paper explores the characteristics and inter-relationships of tax systems in the OECD countries over the period 2014–2020, i.e., from a relatively consolidated economic period until the end of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. A predictable tax system is essential for the proper functioning of the economy. One of our two main research objectives was to develop a composite indicator for taxation, consisting of tax rates and tax administration time. This composite indicator was then tested using multivariate statistical methods. Our second research objective was to explore the correlation between tax rates, tax burden indicators and macroeconomic indicators over the period 2014–2020, focusing on three years, 2014, 2019 and 2020. An important criterion for the choice of the study years was that 2014 was considered the first overall year of recovery from the crisis, 2019 the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic, and 2020 the first year affected by the pandemic. We investigated the significant differences between the composite indicator categories and the tax burden macroeconomic indicators, and examined and tested correlations between the variables under study (tax rates, tax burden and macroeconomic variables). We found that the amount of working time spent on tax administration is decreasing, presumably due to the increasingly digitalised environment, but this trend has been slightly interrupted by the pandemic. Furthermore, we found that countries with more complex tax systems with a high tax burden perform worse on certain macroeconomic indicators, mainly in southern Europe from a geographical perspective; however, these potentially more burdensome, higher-rate tax systems of more developed countries do not put these countries at a competitive disadvantage. This reflects on the fact that these countries rely on the monetarist school rather than the Keynesian school, a fact which was also compared and considered in our paper.

The paper examines the financial culture and the use of financial knowledge of the Hungarian population based on Hofstede’s four-factor cultural dimension theory. Three research questions (financial application of Hofstede’s cultural model, testing it among the Hungarian population, and examining the relationship between financial knowledge and application) were investigated using a questionnaire-based quantitative research method on a representative sample. To answer the research questions, variables were grouped using principal component analysis, cluster analysis was performed to typify the population, and correlation analysis was carried out for financial knowledge and application. Based on the study, we recommended that financial education is important. A limitation of the study is that it is not representative in terms of educational attainment, but it is suitable for describing the financial characteristics of the Hungarian population. The study found that the Hungarian population can be characterized by applying Hofstede’s cultural model of finance. A significant part of the population holds collectivist views. It is also important to note that financial self-confidence and success orientation are not related to financial knowledge and its successful application.