Human resource management in Hungarian agriculture

Out of the four major issues of management: market, human resources, production and finance, recent publications tend to put more and more emphasis on human resources. Given the scientific and technological developments, it is no wonder that human resource management has seen such a dynamic development. Human resource management as a managerial function plays an important role in agriculture, particularly in the management of large commercial farms. Compared to other sectors of the economy, agriculture has a high ratio of unqualified labour. The number of farm employees is continuously decreasing and fluctuation in labour need is high depending on the season and the weather. With technological change, managerial expectations regarding labour have also changed. A survey of Hungarian farm managers regarding their views on human resources management shows that they consider performance assessment as their most important task. Regarding the selection of workers, the most important requirements are task correspondence and ability to cooperate. Formal qualification is not seen as an important requirement. However, there are differences between managers at different hierarchical levels