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The study presents critical reflections on the course and results of Polish local self-government reforms from March 1990, when after 40 years of the system of territorial soviets (national councils), self-government was reintroduced into communes, until January 2018, when an attempt to improve the systemic institutions of self-government in communes, poviats and voivodships was once again revisited. The author points out significant discrepancies between the basic ethical and political values of local self-government, i.e. democracy, independence and efficiency, and the changing content of self-government systemic laws as well as the practice of local authorities’ operations, and formulates proposals aimed at repairing Polish local self-government by adjusting its organisation and functioning to the principles resulting from the Constitution of the Republic of Poland and the European Charter of Local Self-Government. He considers as the most important the elimination of pathological phenomena of simulated local democracy which include: a drastically low turnout in elections and referenda, the disappearance of democratic responsibility of local self-government bodies, and the autonomy of the directly elected executive body of the commune from the influence of the local representation. From this point of view, he positively assesses the new regulations, strengthening the guarantee of transparency of operations carried out by local self-government bodies and control rights of councillors, as well as expanding the catalogue of initiative, consultative and control powers of citizens. He points out, however, that ensuring real democracy in of the local authorities requires a deeper reconstruction of the principles of self-government, the election process, and strengthening the role of representation in creating and enforcing the responsibility of executive bodies.
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The right to the protection of personal data, which is part of the right to privacy, is a fundamental human right. Thus, its guarantees were included in the high-level regulations of the European Union as well as the legal norms of the EU Member States. The first Polish law regulating the protection of personal data was adopted in 1997 as the implementation of EU Directive 95/46. The law imposed a number of obligations on public and private entities which process personal data in order to protect the rights of data subjects and, in particular, to guarantee them the ability to control the correctness of processing of their personal data. Therefore, the law obliged data controllers to process data only on the basis of the premises indicated in the legislation, to adequately secure data, and to comply with the disclosure obligation concerning data subjects, including their right to correct false or outdated data or to request removal of data processed in violation of the law. However, as complaints directed by citizens to the supervisory body—the Inspector General for Personal Data Protection—showed, personal data controllers, especially those operating in the private sector, did not comply with the law, acting in a manner that violated their customers’ rights. In the hitherto existing unfair business practices of entrepreneurs, the violations of the data protection provisions that were the most burdensome for customers were related to preventing them from exercising their rights, including the right to control the processing of data, as well as the failure to provide the controller’s business address, which made it impossible for subjects whose data were used in violation of the law or for the inspecting authorities to contact the company, a lack of data security and a failure to follow the procedures required by law, the failure to secure documents containing personal data or their abandonment, a lack of updating customer data, the use of unverified data sets and sending marketing offers to deceased people or incorrect target recipients, and excessive amounts of data requested by controllers. The violations of the rights of data subjects recorded in Poland and other EU Member States—among other arguments—provided inspiration for the preparation of a new legal act in the form of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (which entered into force on 25 May 2018). The extension of the rights of people whose data are processed was combined in the GDPR with the introduction of new legal instruments disciplining data controllers. Instruments in the form of administrative fines and the strongly emphasised possibility to demand compensation for a violation of the right to data protection were directed in particular against economic entities violating the law.
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Both in theory and practice, it is emphasised that engaging in CSR actions brings many benefits to companies. One of the commonly listed advantages is more trust from investors, which enables the achievement of superior returns from securities issued by socially responsible firms. The paper endeavours to investigate whether this benefit can be also noticed among businesses in the Polish index of socially responsible companies RESPECT. The study involves firms included in the RESPECT index from its inception (November 2011) to the end of 2017. The authors compared the RESPECT index with selected Polish market indices between 2009 and 2017. Empirical studies, based on an analysis of returns, risk, dividend yields, and shareholder structure, facilitated the assessment of the attractiveness of investments in the shares of socially responsible businesses against the background of other firms quoted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.
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At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, a new economic doctrine called ordoliberalism was born in Germany. The foundations of this doctrine were values such as responsibility, solidarity, justice, and freedom. Classics of ordoliberalism formulated a number of recommendations and requirements for businesses in their writings. One of them was the public responsibility, which had the private-economic and socio-economic nature. In Germany sports’ (football) enterprises functioning in the form of companies and associations are participants in the sports-economic competition in the two professional leagues (1.Bundesliga and 2.Bundesliga). At the same time sports enterprises pursue different aims: among the economic goals, there are also the social goals. In the structures of sports enterprises, there are several departments dealing with CSR and implementation of partnership projects. The article concludes that 1) the constitutive elements of ordoliberalism had an influence on the functioning of sports (football) enterprises in Germany, 2) the projects realized under the social responsibility rule that were undertaken by sports companies were strongly related to sports education, environmental protection, and social exclusion.
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Johan Swinnen, Devin Briski, Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2017, 187.
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The article analyses the key problems facing the textile and clothing industry, including social and economic aspects of its functioning, and puts forward steps that could be taken to bring the industry closer to sustainable development. The issues discussed include outsourcing of the clothing and textiles production, salaries that can be 50% below a living wage, and fast fashion, which endangers the sustainable development approach to the production and consumption of textile products. The paper provides examples of initiatives aimed at achieving balance in areas including multilateral agreements, independent initiatives among clothing companies to improve pay conditions, respect for employee rights and ensuring safe working conditions, and also the popularisation of slow fashion movement, a response to the dominant phenomenon of consumerism.
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Due to current environment awareness, there has been an increase in investment opportunities concerning mutual funds with a focus on environmental issues. This paper analyzes the performance and risk sensitivities of German green mutual funds in comparison with their German socially responsible investment (SRI) and conventional peers. We also evaluate the results of the German green mutual funds in different market conditions. Because of this, we use and compare this performance during three periods, differentiating crises and non-crisis periods. In order to implement this analysis, we apply a CAPM-1 factor and a Carhart 4-factor methodology and find that in the full sample period 2007–2018 period, environmental funds had lower performance than conventional funds and SRI funds with similar characteristics. However, if we focus on crisis and non-crisis periods, the results change. During the financial crisis (2007–2009), green funds achieved adjusted returns slightly better than their peers; in the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis (2010-2012), the results are again similar to the results from the full sample period. And during the non-crisis period, they are not significantly different from conventional mutual funds, but they perform better than SRI mutual funds.
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Due to the fact that clusters should implement the idea of an open innovation model, the paper focuses on the role of Lower Silesian clusters in promoting knowledge flow between enterprises and other network participants, which are measured by the numbers of joint inventions and patent citations. On the basis of the analysis of national and international patent applications, it has been found that few inventions of enterprises are created in cooperation with other cluster members as well as that enterprises refer to the knowledge of other cluster members in their patent descriptions to a limited extent, which in general does not support the thesis that cluster membership contributes to the intensification of knowledge-diffusion processes.
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The theme of this treatise are professional insurance fraud from the perspective of past and present. It brings the history of insurance fraud, their characteristics and the definition in the law and beyond, examines the causes and effects of insurance fraud to the insurance company and its clients. The paper includes a list of ways you can fight with insurance fraud and also look at modern methods and prevention technologies. An integral part of this type of contribution is also criminal law offenses related to insurance fraud. Content are also recommendations for preventive action of insurers against insurance fraud. Work provides insight on current statistics of insurance fraud in the Czech Republic.
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The Mirrlees Fair tagging model described by Akerlof demonstrates that this concept leads to revenue redistribution efficiency, but implies difficulty in applying due to high administrative costs. Quantitative analysis of some redistribution process mechanisms which involves only indirect state intervention through corporate social responsibility (CSR) can be an effective optimal taxation leverage. In order to achieve this goal, the authors have described appropriate utility functions for actors involved in redistribution processes using CSR. The study considers the benefits for which companies could be open and interested in financing CSR programs that significantly minimize the social risks. The paper aims to quantify the impact of specific measures of corporate social responsibility in the economy and to determine the specific equilibrium conditions of this type of intervention. The study analyzes the demand and supply of a specific intervention area related to poverty programs and aggregates the results into a model that aims to determine the sensitivity of the CSR programs against certain parameters. The research also recommends the involvement of the private sector through charitable and philanthropic programs. The social and economic indicators have been analyzed using advanced statistical techniques (e.g. decision tree algorithm, regression, Monte Carlo analysis). The study generates a quantitative model for determining social risk based on community distinctive variables, to be acknowledged and used in carrying out specific CSR investments by capital decision makers.
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Factors such as different cultural determinants undoubtedly affect “the shape” of the economy. Mueller, Hofstede and Gray, among others, have studied the impact of the cultural factors on an economy, especially in fields such as accounting. Reflections on the topic have also appeared in the Polish literature, although relatively late. One of the cultural factors is, beyond doubt, religion, forming some ethical attitudes through the transfer of certain values which become the guiding principles for individual actions, exerting an obvious influence on the applicable standards in a given society. The author does not claim to consider the relations between religion and ethics, as only issues concerning a possible to demonstrate influence of religious norms on accounting are raised in the article. The aim is to discuss briefly the impact of Christianity, Islam and Confucianism on accounting systems and practices based on literature studies. In conclusion, the question arises about the sense of the convergence of accounting standards, at least in the context of the current efforts undertaken in this field.
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The knowledge economy is defined, according to the World Bank, through the integration of its four main component elements: education and training,innovation systems, information infrastructure, economic incentives and institutionalregime. The first part of the paper reconciles knowledge economy and corporate socialentrepreneurship, while the second part focuses on the education and training, andinnovation pillars of the knowledge economy, and more specifically it resorts to theframework of corporate social entrepreneurship as a transformational innovationstrategy for company growth. The current investigation has been conducted by meansof case study method having the following research question: “How does corporatesocial entrepreneurship manifest in corporations?”., accompanied by secondaryresearch questions such as: “How does the company mobilize its resources to create aninnovative product/ service/ approach in order to tackle the social issue?, How does thecompany contribute to local development?”. The findings revealed that the social issueof high levels of nitrates in the waters inspired the company to combine a testing tool(technological innovation) with marketing communication which eventually resultedin an innovative approach for the company to increase the loyalty of their customersand to reach out for new ones. The present paper has been developed based on theauthor’s doctoral research.
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In the last decade, sustainability has become an imperative for strategic management of companies and their business models. Through the necessity of adapting to green energy and environmentally friendly processes, products and services, companies have started to reorganize their business model canvases according to the sustainability concept, that imposes a redesign from before the production process until the end of the lifecycle of the product or service. The objective of the present article is to contribute to the classical theoretical business model canvas of Osterwalder and Pigneur with sustainable elements, which could serve as a basis for scientific literature, but also for practical implementation in the private business field. The paper contributes through the additions to the existing elements of the business model canvas with elements necessary to ensure a ’’clean’’ production and consumption process from producer to consumer. The relevance of the paper lies in the fact that the business model elements need to be improved continuously with the increased dynamics of the economy and the need to ensure a sustainable future for the next generations, which is still an emerging topic practically and theoretically.
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The channels of this popular messaging app became the go-to place for Russian political gossip and leaks – and a threat to Vladimir Putin.
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Action Research (AR) is not only the research method or strategy but also the efficient tool supporting knowledge developmentand the introduction of changes in the organization. The aim of using AR is to induce changes in a given area or to convince theparticipants to initiate such changes, in a way that the researcher and the subject expert collaborate to diagnose the problemand find the solution to it. The cooperation of researchers, practitioners, and laymen is the primary assumption while applying the AR approach. The goal of such cooperation is to collect data derived from everyday practice systematically, to analyzethese that data and decide as for the future shape of that practice. The research presented in this paper has been carried outin a public organization, namely the District Court in Gdansk. It referred to the extrajudicial and pro-social activities of thatCourt. Such research aimed to bring the answer to the question of whether the courts as public organizations can undertakepro-social activities, and if yes – what should be the area of such actions. The research was carried out between June 2013 andMarch 2018, i.e., for almost five years.The research methods included: observations of the internal changes in the organization, interviews with the court management, conversations with different groups of stakeholders as well as a quantitative study of their opinions about the quality of thecooperation with that court. The analysis of the results confirms that firstly it is possible to apply the Action Research approachin public organizations, and secondly, that intervention resulting from the use of this research method is effective. It is worthto stress that the pro-social actions initiated by the research are continued despite the change in management of the court andsome political changes as well. One may say that those actions became a part of the organizational routine.The results achieved through that research supplement knowledge on the possibility of carrying out the pro-social actionsby the public organizations, in particular by courts. They fall within the scope of the strategic management discipline and thepublic administration sub-discipline.
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The Fair Trade which is currently getting more and more into the consumers mind is primarily based on the creation of partnerships between producers on the one side and consumers on the other side. The business concept of Fair Trade is a trading method that does not emphasise commonly compared price parameters of products. The aim of the paper discusses the topics of the commercial concept of the Fair Trade. Data was obtained using the quantitative research using questionnaire data collection techniques among respondents (n = 840) in the age group 15 to 34 years. The results showed that the attitude of the younger population between the ages of 15-34 to the business concept of Fair Trade is quite positive.
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The study emphasizes the importance of increasing tax ethics for Azerbaijan, which wants to reduce its dependence on oil revenues. Since the civil service is one of the important factors affecting tax ethics, it has been studied whether the reforms carried out in the field of the tax service cause transformational changes in tax ethics. Emphasizing the reforms in the service sector in the tax system of Azerbaijan, data were compared that reflected tax ethics in the country in different years, and it was found that tax ethics increased over time. The data studied show that the quality of services provided in the tax system has had a positive impact on the promotion of tax ethics in society.
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This paper focuses on the responsibility in the field of architecture, more specifically in the field of construction of single family houses. Responsibility is discussed in two sections - Responsibility during designing a single-family house and responsibility during execution of a single-family house. The three main participants, on whom responsibility lies, are: architect, investor and/or user and the contractor. Paper also discusses four issues: decline of investments in real estate between 2008 and 2014, disloyal competition, legislation, and inconsistent and illegal building. In the end are presented possible solutions for the mentioned issues including raising awareness of person's responsibility, different sanctions for offenders, change of current legislation, active collaboration, awareness of individual's role in the process and the necessity of legally differentiating between the investor and the final user.
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The purpose of Higher Education is not only to equip individuals with technical knowledge and skills for business life but also to provide them scientific knowledge and skills in the highest level of professional values within a universal structure of educational institutions. In the formation of professional identity and qualifications, the craft knowledge is a prerequisite but is not sufficient. The shared values, attitudes, principles ofprofessional ethics, acquired by the member of a profession, are extremely decisive in the phase of applying and presenting knowledge. As it is known, today's rapidly changing and developing economic activities with their new branches have made the Professional Ethics a highly disputed issue. Accordingly, social ethics, scientific ethics and professional ethics training at the universities have gathered increasing attention and have become an extremely important factor for social and professional outlook of the students.
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