After retrotopia? The future of organizing and the thought of Zygmunt Bauman

The main body of work of Zygmunt Bauman concerns his home discipline of sociology, but his insights have been influential also in the field of organization studies. In this text, we provide an overview of the extent of this influence, providing some additional context for positioning the other contributions to this special section. Afterwards, we explore in more detail two notions central for Bauman’s late thought: that of liquidity and retrotopia. The former constitutes the root metaphor for theorizing the current global predicament. In this text, we analyse how two modes of interpreting it, using the assumptions behind Kurt Lewin’s CATS model and the alchemical tradition underpinning Carl Gustav Jung’s conception of archetypes respectively, can help us theorize the alternative modes of organizing and managing encountered in a study of contemporary alternative organizations.These insights form the starting point for our second goal: to explore Bauman’s notion of retrotopia as a potentially fruitful starting point for discussing both the deficiencies of current visions of our future society, and the possibilities and vicissitudes of developing new forms of organizing and managing. Such new forms, both as practice and as theoretical constructs, are urgently needed if we are to face the numerous, and potentially catastrophic global challenges facing our society today.     

Dividend-Driven Trading Strategies: Evidence from the Warsaw Stock Exchange

This study presents an analysis of dividend-driven trading strategies based on dividend yield growth effects in the Polish stock market in the years 1994–2004. Results indicate that the dividend yield growth portfolios were capable of beating the market in the entire sample period. Their performance, however, was not consistent over time and the highest returns were obtained during final years. Empirical findings based on the analysis of different types of portfolios demonstrate the importance of dividends as a source of significant fundamental information items from stock market companies. At the same time, they show that a dividend investment strategy for the Polish stock market is most successful when the selection of stocks for the dividend yield growth portfolios is subject to further restrictions, most notably concerning company size.

Inflation and price setting in a natural experiment

We analyze the behavior of price setters in Poland during the transition from a planned to a market economy, using a large disaggregated data set. The size and frequency of price changes, as well as relative price variability, all increase as inflation rises. The effect of expected inflation on relative price variability is much stronger than the effect of unexpected inflation. Despite the unusual economic environment, the results are qualitatively identical, and quantitatively stronger, than those in Lach and Tsiddon [1992. Journal of Political Economy 100, 349-389].     

Social and economic changes: Poland 1989–95

The systematic transformation in Poland began with enormous expectations of the people concerning results of the re-establishment of the market economy and economic freedom. Four and a half years after the start of reform, overwhelming popular disillusionment and frustrations have caused the spectacular comeback of the post-Communists. Some of the frustrations have been rooted in the radical changes in income distribution and the growth of poverty. An even more important factor than changes in wages and other income distribution has been changes in the relative position of different professions, sectors of economic activity, and industries and regions.     

Effective Management of Own Funds in Polish Cooperative Banks

Today cooperative banks belong to the most significant financial institution in the world. Moreover, they can compete with commercial banks. The own funds of the cooperative bank are important in their activity. The main goal of this paper is to investigate how much the level of the own funds of the Polish cooperative banks influenced their efficiency. The research pertained to operating cooperative banks in Poland. The following measures of the efficiency were used in the research： return on Equity （ROE）, net profit, index C/I, and financial margin. The results of the study indicate that banks from the Quartile III （highest aggregate own funds）, had the highest net profits, the highest ROE, the lowest C/I value, the lowest ROE, and the lowest financial markups. On this basis, it remains to be recommended that banks of highest aggregate own funds continue expansion of own funds which will increase lending capacity and subsequently contribute to higher effectiveness.     

The institutional environment for multinational investment

This article posits that the effect of political hazards onthe choice of market entry mode varies across multinationalfirms based on the extent to which they face expropriation hazardsfrom their potential joint-venture partners in the host country(the level of contractual hazards). As political hazards increase,the multinational faces an increasing threat of opportunisticexpropriation by the government. Partnering with host-countryfirms that possess a comparative advantage in interactions withthe host-country government can safeguard against this hazard.However, as contractual hazards increase, the potential benefitto the joint-venture partner of manipulating the political systemfor it's own benefit at the expense of the multinational increasesas well, thereby diminishing the hazard-mitigating benefit offorming a joint venture. A two-stage bivariate probit estimationtechnique is used to test these hypotheses on a sample of 3,389overseas manufacturing operations by 461 firms in 112 countries.     

Privatization of state-owned enterprises in Poland

The transition from centrally planned to market economies in Eastern Europe has become a field of debate in economic literature since the late 1980s. Privatization plays a very important role because it is also a sensitive political problem. Privatization is a key element of the several reform packages that are being applied in Poland. This paper examines the different ways that small- and medium-sized enterprises were privatized from 1990 to 1995 using statistical data of the Ministry of Privatization [1995]. Analyzed enterprises are presented by the following group of projects. Capital privatization, direct foreign investment, joint stock companies awaiting privatization, and other methods of privatization are connected with the special program designed for firms with bad financial standing.     

Technological substitution forecasting with a model based on biological analogy

Although many models of technological substitution processes exist, only a few deal with multilevel technological substitution and still fewer may be easily applied to forecasting of real multilevel substitution processes. We propose a stochastic model of multilevel technological substitution and a forecasting method based on this model. In the author's opinion, the developed algorithm may be easily applied to forecasting various technological substitution processes. An example of the application of this algorithm to forecasting of world energy consumption is presented. The algorithm makes possible an investigation of the impact of future innovation on the system's behavior.