Public Management as a University Discipline in New European Union Member States

Abstract

Many market-type mechanisms were introduced in the public administration reforms in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Therefore public administration higher education in CEE should prepare not only classical public administrators but also public managers to operate in this new environment. This paper summarizes our research results on three new Central European members. The focus is on the scale of public management (PM) programmes, on the proportion of PM courses in the curricula of accredited PM programmes and on the dominant teaching approaches.     

Learning organization at higher education institutions in the EU: proposal for implementing philosophy of learning organization—results from research

Quality & Quantity - For an organization to develop, to improve, and to innovate in this information age, it requires a management system that will maximize use of human potential that it has...     

Evaluation of elderly households’ financial standing in Central and Eastern European countries

The purpose of the paper is to analyse and evaluate the financial situation of elderly households in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Current demographic trends simultaneously with reforms of pension systems in the CEE region may lead to an increasing number of elderly households being exposed to poverty risk. In this study, Ward’s method and the method of standardised sums were applied to classify and order the examined countries according to the financial standing of elderly households. The obtained results allow us to identify countries with similar financial situations for elderly households in 2007, 2010 and 2013, and changes in clusters and ranking over the analysed period. The main findings show that the financial situation of the elderly in CEE countries is very differentiated and changeable, however over the analysed period the financial standing of the elderly seems to be most similar in Poland and Slovakia as well as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.     

Evaluation of sustainability reporting practices in Poland

This paper examines voluntary sustainability reporting practices in Poland. The number of these types of reports published by companies from year to year increases however the form, content and quality of these reports varies. Disclosure of economic, social and environmental performance demonstrates social responsibility of a company and therefore, the author first has analysed in this paper the level of implementation of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept in Polish companies. Then the attention was focused on sustainability reports published in 2011. The questionnaire to evaluate the quality and type of the disclosed information in sustainability reports consisted of twenty three criteria grouped in five categories. The author discusses the overall results as well as results obtained in the particular categories. The analyses indicate that sustainability reporting is not widespread among companies in Poland. On the other hand, increasing demands/expectations from stakeholders in this direction are not observed. In 2011, 32 reports were published, 6 of them have been audited by independent organizations and 19 have been developed in accordance with the GRI guidelines (Global reporting initiative sustainability reporting guidelines). Corporate social responsibility in Poland is a relatively new concept and although all events suggestive of the development of this concept, it is still little known and rarely implemented among entrepreneurs. The results of the study indicate that sustainability reporting practices in Poland, despite a few good examples and valuable disclosures, are at its early stage of development.     

Bank-type specific determinants of sensitivity of loan-loss provisions to business cycle

In this paper, we explore several new factors which may affect the procyclicality of loan-loss provisions in all commercial and cooperative banks operating in Poland between 2000 and 2012. More specifically, we test whether there are visible differences between commercial and cooperative banks in the sensitivity of those provisions to the business cycle. Our results show that whereas loan-loss provisions are procyclical in both cases, the procyclicality is particularly prominent and stronger in the case of commercial banks, than of the cooperative banks. Additionally, in contrast to existing findings, we establish that the negative impact of the business cycle on loan-loss provisions is greater in the case of small banks than of medium or large ones, this feature being common for both commercial and cooperative banks. We have identified two factors which affect procyclicality of loan-loss provisions in different ways for commercial and cooperative banks. The first factor is the empirical importance of capital adequacy ratio size. In commercial banks, the capital ratio size exerts a statistically significant impact on the procyclicality regardless of capitalization. The other factor is discretionary income-smoothing, as we find that the statistically significant increase of procyclicality due to the high discretionary income-smoothing is present only in cooperative banks.