Management in agriculture; specialities of development

Agricultural engineer education at University of Debrecen has more than 140 years’ history. Seven departments were established for the higher agricultural education, launching in 1867. One of them was the Department of Practice. The education of Management and Organization became connected to this Department. It absolutely coincides with the general relationship of managerial thinking, and its development, meaning that management and organization form parts the practice. In the essay we introduce this development process of the 140 years’ old education and research of management. We try to identify similarities with general history of development of managerial science. We emphasize that change of managerial education in Debrecen is identical with development process of former socialist countries of Central-Europe. Practical education and approach turned into applied farm management by the middle of XX. century. In 1950 name of department changed into „Applied Farm Business Department”. In 1970 the department was called „Labor Organization and Management”, later in 1975 it changed again for „Management and Labor Organization”. It illustrates the change in way of thinking, since primarily labor organization was main stream of education, while later the dominant role of management was identified and acknowledged. This change was also experienced in the field of research beside education. After the change of regime we established Department of Management and Labor Sciences in the beginning of 2000, which later was transformed into a larger Institute. We also introduce that private research conception, which serves as base for a private managerial science program of our Doctoral School, operating in the field of management and organization