Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not only a philosophy of acting for many companies, but a basic strategy for building a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, in the conditions when as a result of globalization the bonds of international cooperation are becoming stronger and stronger, it is increasingly difficult to shape. The factor of significant influence here is the partners’ cultural diversity. Understanding the foundations of this diversity provides an opportunity to make more conscious decisions concerning the choice of partners and forms of cooperation. It also facilitates project-making and implementing CSR tools. The key issue here is the identification and evaluation of pro-social features of the partners’ culture. Choosing the partners from the culture suitable for implementing CSR allows to maximize its benefits. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of national and organizational culture on the way of shaping CSR. In order to study the issue, the foundations of the topic, the nature of national and organizational culture, have been characterized. In addition, the underlying cultural differences and basic problems of shaping CSR have been signalled. The empirical demonstration of the issue are the results of CSR research in selected companies from different EU countries, but belonging to the same capital groups.

In the future managers will have to take into account in their everyday decision-making processes the values promoted by corporate social responsibility. Apart from the consideration of the problems related to the market, profitability, sources of financing, etc. much attention will have to be paid to economic, social and ecological results of business activities, so to the ideas that form the foundations of the concept of corporate social responsibility. However, if businesses are to apply any new concept, method or management technique, it is necessary to familiarize themselves with it first. Therefore, the objective of the present research is the identification of the degree of the awareness of CSR concepts, their scope and the frequency of socially-responsible behaviours displayed among economic entities representing the warmińsko-mazurski region. The research objective was presented in the form of a question: Are companies operating in the warmińsko-mazurski region aware of the existence of the concepts of corporate social responsibility and do they understand them? In the light of the above objective the following research hypothesis was formulated: Entrepreneurs and employees of companies operating in the warmińsko-mazurskie province are familiarised with CSR concepts but to a small degree only and activities undertaken by them in this scope are usually of a temporary character and do not contribute to building the image of socially-responsible businesses. The studies were diagnostic and the research method applied was a diagnostic survey based on the developed questionnaire.

Over the years scholars, politicians, economists and others have recognized that no country could achieve economic growth and development without an efficient educational system. Functional education plays a central role in preparing individuals to become the labour force and in the same time to respect the environment in order to use efficiently the resources. It is said that from immemorial times, education was the one who offered solutions to various problems, but also generated a lot of controversies in the evolution of the world. Thus, in the case of a crisis, the education must be studied from at least two points of view. When speaking about crisis, first we must pose a question whether education is only a victim of the crisis or it may be a cause or a part of the solution needed to exit from the crisis. Starting from such a question, this paper aims to emphasize the existing connection between economic crisis and the contemporary education. The paper starts by using a retrospective and contrastive analysis, based on methodological pillars such as: filiations of ideas, genesis, and statistics. Using quantitative and also qualitative methods, the paper focuses on the way of functioning of the Romanian educational system and offers suggestions how to improve it.

Small and medium-sized enterprises are believed to be a key driving force of economic vitality, innovation and new job creation. For a few years the European Union has been monitoring SME performance and the quality of public procurement procedures to make access of SMEs to the public procurement market easier and provide for their greater participation in this market. These activities have their origin in the assumption that having in mind the size of the public procurement market and public resources involved, suitable shaping of this area may improve effectiveness of selected policies at the EU level and in particular member countries. The directives concerning public procurement should ensure opening the market of public procurement for all enterprises irrespectively of their size. Recently the public procurement market in Poland has been continuously growing which doubtlessly resulted from Poland’s accession to the European Union. The aim of this paper is to give evidence of SME position on the public procurement market and to attempt to answer two basic research questions. Firstly, is the market potential fully used as far as applying for awarding public contracts by SMEs is concerned? And secondly, what are the main obstacles determining the access of SMEs to the public procurement market? This is done by reference to available statistical data and two studies that were carried out by the author.

Mainstream economics tends to perceive economic systems in a mechanistic way, which makes it impossible to grasp the notion of the irreversibility of real economic process­es and thus encourages referring to the achievements of thermodynamics.Although economic equivalents of thermodynamic quantities have been discussed for more than a hundred years, a sig­nificant development of thermodynamic techniques of modeling economic phenomena, that could complement standard econometric methods, has not been observed.It seems that a comparative analysis of the course of thermodynamic and business cycles could enhance the understand­ing of the mechanisms underlying business cycles, especially in the context of mutual rela­tions between economy and its environment.The aim of this article is to discuss some simi­larities and differences between economic and thermodynamic systems (heat engines and heat pumps). In particular, the problem of performing positive or negative work by an economy is considered and illustrated by the analysis of statistical data referring to the American and Polish economies.

This paper is about impact of crisis on the contemporary issues in economic regulation of airport charges and implementation of EU Directive in the Slovak Republic. The problems of creation and application of European legislation started just before crisis and the most important regulation formulas have been created during the crisis.

The controversy over the economic activity of government is not a new phenomena, what is reflected in the multitude of publications associated with this issue. Despite the fact that even the substitute of consensus is still a long way, it seems that theorists have reached agreement on two issues, which – although not lead to further settlement – have an effect on the entire course and nature of the dispute. First, economists regardless of the school which they represent, they admit that market failure is a fact. Secondly, the need for intervention by the authorities within the confines of ‘wise and effective economic policy’ is justified because of necessity to correct imperfect market mechanisms. First, we focus on the view concerning market failures, and we attempt to determine the reason that certain facts – such features of the socio-economic system as the existence of externalities or imperfect information – are perceived and classified as failures. Then we demonstrate that even if the market is not functioning properly, this fact does not automatically justify intervention of government.

Intensification of international tax competition, associated with the process of globalization and financial markets integration is recently becoming a very live issue, causing a lot of both enthusiasm and scepticism among politicians, economists, taxpayers. This is mainly because of its ambiguous effects - it may introduce, mitigate, or exacerbate inefficiencies in both private and public sector. In different models, tax competition may either limit or increase public expenditures and taxes on mobile factors, with differing welfare consequences. It poses a serious challenge to the autonomy of domestic fiscal policymakers and to the global economy in general. This paper reviews potential advantages and disadvantages of the phenomenon, facing commonly used hypotheses and beliefs with facts and numbers. Though it does not provide a clear-cut answer to the question of whether tax competition is good or bad, it gives an idea of its complexity and of great significance for the future of fiscal policy development.

Firms are looking for optimal combination of factors, which allow them to achieve competitive advantage. With the passage of time the role of these factors are changing. The article presents results of authors’ research, which covered 20 firms from shoe and 15 from tanning production. The research was carried out in Poland in the second quarter of 2009. It showed that the most important factor of firms’ competitiveness are establishment of cooperation with R&D unit and receiving financial grant for R&D activity (both these factors received average mark 3,41 in five points scale, where 1 is not important at all and 5 the most important). Special attention during the research was given to the role of industrial design. The most import for researched firms in this field were increasing their products’ recognition (mark 4,06) and increasing aesthetic (3,94).

The aim of the article is to present the size and dynamics of public funding assigned to agriculture in Poland in the years 2001-2008. The analysis exerted significant regional disparity (diversity) in distribution of public financial funds to individual voivodships. The largest amounts of budgetary funds were assigned to the regions characterized by the largest scale of agricultural activity.