The Process of Education of OSH Services and Organization Development

Contemporary business is characterised, first and foremost, by quickly growing competition, rapid changes in customer preferences, and constant pressure for innovations and cost effectiveness. That creates a difficult work environment, with occupational safety and health (OSH) management becoming a strategic element in the planning of enterprises?? development (compare: Znajmiecka-Sikora et al. 2009, 2010). The article aims to analyse the knowledge, qualifications, and professional competence of OSH service employees??a group that is crucial for maintaining an appropriate safety level in the organisation??in the context of employers?? expectations. The study covered 450 OSH service employees working in selected provinces of Poland and was carried out from 2009 to 2010. It used an interview questionnaire composed of 64 items concerning the knowledge, skills, activity in the training market, and flexibility of OSH service employees. The analysis of received results indicates that although OSH service employees hold appropriate qualifications (confirmed by certificates of having undergone appropriate training), they often have insufficient knowledge and skills in the scope of duties imposed on them, hence they are not able to meet the expectations of their employers.     

Convergence of trading strategies in continuous double auction markets with boundedly-rational networked traders

This paper considers the convergence of trading strategies among artificial traders connected to one another in a social network and trading in a continuous double auction financial marketplace. Convergence is studied by means of an agent-based simulation model called the Social Network Artificial stoCk marKet model. Six different canonical network topologies (including no-network) are used to represent the possible connections between artificial traders. Traders learn from the trading experiences of their connected neighbours by means of reinforcement learning. The results show that the proportions of traders using particular trading strategies are eventually stable. Which strategies dominate in these stable states depends to some extent on the particular network topology of trader connections and the types of traders.     

Universally optimal designs under mixed interference models with and without block effects

The literature on neighbor designs as introduced by Rees (Biometrics 23:779–791, 1967) is mainly devoted to construction methods, providing few results on their statistical properties, such as efficiency and optimality. A review of the available literature, with special emphasis on the optimality of neighbor designs under various fixed effects interference models, is given in Filipiak and Markiewicz (Commun Stat Theory Methods 46:1127–1143, 2017). The aim of this paper is to verify whether the designs presented by Filipiak and Markiewicz (2017) as universally optimal under fixed interference models are still universally optimal under models with random interference effects. Moreover, it is shown that for a specified covariance matrix of random interference effects, a universally optimal design under mixed interference models with block effects is universally optimal over a wider class of designs. In this paper the method presented by Filipiak and Markiewicz (Metrika 65:369–386, 2007) is extended and then applied to mixed interference models without or with block effects.     

Is Religion a Determinant of Financial Development?

International Advances in Economic Research - Studies on the determinants of financial development have been silent on the role of religion. Growing evidence in the literature about how financial...     

Wealth inequality in Central and Eastern Europe: Evidence from household survey and rich lists’ data combined*

We study how the problem of the ‘missing rich’, the underrepresentation of the wealthiest in household surveys, affects wealth inequality estimates for the post‐socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The survey data from the second wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) are joined with the data from the national rich lists for Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia. Pareto distribution is fitted to the joined survey and rich lists’ data to impute the missing observations for the largest wealth values. We provide the first estimates of the top‐corrected wealth inequality for the CEE region in 2013/2014. Despite a short period of wealth accumulation during the post‐1989 market economy period, our adjustment procedure reveals that wealth inequality in the Baltic countries is comparable to that of Germany (one of the most wealth‐unequal countries in Europe), while in Poland and Hungary it has reached levels observed in France or Spain. We discuss possible explanations of these findings with reference to the speed and range of privatization processes, extent of income inequality, and the role of inheritances and wealth taxes in the region.     

“Don't try to teach me,I got nothing to learn”: Management students' perceptions of business ethics teaching

Interest is growing towards including business ethics in university curricula, aiming at improving ethical behaviour of future managers. Extant literature has investigated the impact of ethics education on different ethics‐related students' cognitive and/or behavioural outcomes, considering variables related to training programmes and students' demographic aspects. Accordingly, we aim at assessing students' understanding of business ethics issues, by focusing on the differences in students' perceptions depending on gender, age, work experience, and ethics courses taken. Testing our hypotheses on a sample of 307 management students at a Polish university, and controlling for social desirability bias, we obtained mixed and partially surprising results. We found significant differences in students' understanding of business ethics depending on their gender and age (female and older students showed more ethical inclinations), but not depending on having taken ethics courses—actually perceptions of such courses worsened after taking them. Besides, work experience was not a significant variable. Moreover, course exposure intensiveness (i.e., number of ethics courses completed), and time passed since completion of the latest course, did not confirm hypothesized effects on most of the dependent (sub)variables. These findings stimulate further questions and challenges for future research (e.g., around course design and methodology, and social/cultural/contextual issues).     

Tourism features as determinants of knowledge transfer in the process of tourist cooperation

The aim of this paper is to identify and characterise determinants of knowledge transfer and absorption resulting from the specific features of tourism, as well as to indicate their consequences for cooperation between stakeholders in a tourist region. Applying a created conceptual framework and case study approach (a mountain tourist region in the south of Poland), five groups of determinants are identified: the domination of small and medium-sized enterprises, the fragmentation and diversity of supply, vocational reinforcers, ownership specificity and the regional/local character of tourism. The author shows how these determinants hinder knowledge transfer and absorption, and therefore generally negatively affect cooperation.     

Entrepreneurship and innovativeness of small and medium-sized construction enterprises

The construction industry is a key industry in any economy. Due to its specific characteristics, the industry is of substantial importance to the development of other sectors. Competition is highly intense, and the industry itself is susceptible to changes in market circumstances that force the entities operating in it to continuously take actions to enhance their competitiveness by, among other things, introducing innovative solutions. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the level of innovativeness of enterprises in the small and medium-sized (SME) sector in the Polish construction industry and to identify the factors that influence this level of innovativeness, which relates to the location of the business and managers’ awareness of the significance of innovation in shaping a firm’s competitiveness. Qualitative research was conducted on a sample of 608 companies. The obtained results demonstrate that construction companies from the SME sector in Poland are characterized by a level of innovativeness that is similar to that found in other enterprises, which is a consequence of the relatively high awareness of the significance of innovation to obtaining a competitive position among the managers of these companies. An analysis of the innovative activities of these companies by location shows, in turn, that entities operating in regions that are less economically developed and less attractive in terms of investment are more innovative.     

Introduction: Transitional economies and changing notions of accounting and accountability

This paper explores the issue of the true and fair view (TFV) and the overriding principle within the European Union (EU), via a legally based analysis of the relationship between EU and national laws. We apply the supremacy of European law to methods of incorporating the TFV into national legislation, using Austria as a detailed case study, showing that all countries – maybe against their original intention – either have an override (as does Austria, contrary to the prevailing local opinion) or have failed to honour their EU commitments. As part of our argument, we explain the importance of the Roman law teleological principle in legal application and interpretation, as is well known in Continental countries. We show that the effect of the UK TFV override is in principle exactly analogous, only arguably even more powerful, which is not at all well known in Anglo-Saxon countries. We suggest reasons why the status quo ante in particular countries may be adhered to, and generalise the implications of our arguments.