Gender and Business Competences of Knowledge Workers in Poland

The purpose of the research described in this article is to verify the influence of gender difference and firm size on the business competencies self-assessment of knowledge workers in small regional enterprises of Lower Silesia region, in Poland, a transition economy. An individual survey was conducted on the basis of the questionnaire of business competencies. Two trials of 169 knowledge workers were constructed via an interpersonal network and sequential random sampling, with the use of passive experimental design. Several dimensions of business competencies are investigated. The results show that females working as knowledge workers in regional small enterprises in Poland manifest less levels of business competencies self-assessment than male colleagues. However, females have the highest scores in sphere of knowledge self-assessment concerning organizational units and organizational responsibility. The novelty is the first use the adapted questionnaire of business competencies self-assessment among knowledge workers in relation to gender and regional small and micro firms, in Poland

Business Competency of IT Professionals and Job Satisfaction in Transition Economies: Insights from Poland

In this paper, we examine the effect of business competence of Information Technology (IT) professionals on their job satisfaction in Poland, a transition economy. The necessary data is collected by a survey conducted among IT professionals working in various companies located in Lower Silesia region, Poland. The preliminary results of this survey indicate that business competency, in general, positively affect job satisfaction of IT professionals in transition economies. However, the surveyed IT professionals feel that possessing business competency does not have any substantial effect on their salary level and professional promotions

Psychological Impact of Social Media Use on Quality of Life and Human Potentiality

Social media is a form of information transfer through websites or applications operating on the Internet, within communities created by users of these websites, which are part of virtual media and are an essential factor in the development of information and communication technologies (ICT4D). Examples are Facebook, WhatsApp, Linkedin, Skype, Instagram, and Twitter. Social media, serving various psychological functions, may alleviate negative emotions caused by distressing life circumstances, despite potentially leading to adverse outcomes, as a compensatory model of Internet-related activities posits. Excessive social media use leads to increased anxiety instead of lessening it (Boursier et al., 2020). Filling time is a crucial motivator for scrolling through social media. Seven-day abstinence from social media increased mental wellbeing and social connectedness; coping, habit, and boredom were responsible for social media use (Brown & Kuss, 2020). Thus, both the negative motivations and adverse effects of social media usage could question whether online activity could improve wellbeing. The role of the media is unique, especially in a crisis, such as pandemics or the threat of war. We study the relationship between the use of social media, human potentiality (HP), and quality of life (QL) of knowledge workers (KWs) in Poland, a transition economy in a crisis. We believe that the use of social media influences the development of HP and the QL of KWs in information systems. By HP, we understand the sensitivity and perception of oneself and others in specific contexts. So we think about a holistic vision of the world, wisdom, awareness of the decision-making sense, world views, ethics and morality, openness to other people, commitment to achieving goals, or aesthetic sensitivity. The QL can mean life satisfaction, wellbeing, and happiness. It is perceived subjectively by the individual and more clearly defined by standard terms or areas. It includes a sense of subjectivity in life, good social relationships, job or family satisfaction, physical wellbeing, and the ability to express an individual spirituality (Anke & Fugl-Meyer, 2003). Our methodological process comprised mixed methods. Qualitative methods included a critical literature review, judgment sampling, and focus group interviews. Quantitative methods based on social media use new indicators and adaptation of psychosocial shorter tools for measuring HP and QL. Social media use indicators were the ways of time spent, the frequency of initiating a new session, the number of platforms the participants are engaged in, and the subjective importance attached to the social media use. We intend to collect the data online with newly adopted questionnaires among 400 KWs from Lower Silesia. We based our study on two research questions: P1. Does social media influence QL and HP in keywords? \u27and\u27 Q2. What dimensions of QL and HP do social media have the greatest impact? . Social media use preliminary research results suggest differentiated relationships between the use of social media various types, QL, and HP among knowledge workers in Poland, a transition economy. We conducted the pilot study among 67 KWs in May 2022, after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Poles admitted approximately three million refugees mainly, and the Polish Ministry of Health announced the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe these two phenomena may have impacted our data, although we cannot yet determine the direction of the bias. We intend to explore this with retrospective experimental research. Our study extends the current research trend regarding the use of psychological effects in social media, especially in crises such as pandemics and the feeling of being threatened by war. We believe that the results of our research will support KWs in their professional and personal development in the educational context.  References Anke, A. G., and Fugl-Meyer, A. R. 2003. “Life satisfaction several years after severe multiple trauma–a retrospective investigation. Clinical Rehabilitation, “(17:4), pp. 431-442. Boursier, V., Gioia, F., Musetti, A., and Schimmenti, A. 2020. “Facing loneliness and anxiety during the COVID-19 isolation: the role of excessive social media use in a sample of Italian adults,” Frontiers in Psychiatry, pp. 1380. Brown, L., and Kuss, D. J. 2020. “Fear of missing out, mental wellbeing, and social connectedness: a sevenday social media abstinence trial. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “(17:12), pp. 4566

Mobbing as a problem in management ethics

A positive company image and its good reputation are usually results of ethical and honest behaviour towards employees and may improve competitiveness, increase profits, customer satisfaction, and create new job jobs. However, it often occurs in dynamically developing firms where ethical norms are not kept and this process can be seen in the lack of equal chances to get a job – people without connections remain without work. According to research, mobbing is a very serious problem. Psychological terror or mobbing in work life involves hostile and unethical communication that is conducted in a systematic manner by one or more individuals, mainly toward one individual, who, due to mobbing, is pushed into a helpless and defenceless position and held there by means of continuing mobbing activities. These actions occur on a very frequent basis (statistical definition: at least once a week) and over a long period (statistical definition: at least six months’ duration). Because of the high frequency and long duration of hostile behaviour, this maltreatment results in considerable mental, psychosomatic, and social misery.Publication of English-language versions of the volumes of the "Annales. Ethics in Economic Life" financed through contract no. 501/1/P-DUN/2017 from the funds of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education devoted to the promotion of scholarship

Strój modnej damy w zwierciadle polskiej satyry oświeceniowej: (na wybranych przykładach)

The foreign outfit of a fashionable Enlightenment lady, just like a man’s tailcoat, was synonymous with thoughtless imitation of moral patterns foreign to Polish culture. This phenomenon was often criticized in journalistic and literary texts of the time, including satires. In this article, the title problem is presented through the example of three satirical works by Elżbieta Drużbacka, Ignacy Krasicki, and Jan Gorczyczewski. Their different time periods (the prelude, the mature and decline of the Polish Enlightenment) show that the fascination with the culture of the Seine, manifested in the dress of fashionable ladies, was reflected in literature from the end of the Saxon period to the post-Stanislaus era. It is important to not that, as can be seen from the above-mentioned works, the elite ladies also wanted to imitate artistocrats in their dress, behavior and interests, and it was thanks to them that the new culture spread from Warsaw to the provinces. In the opinion of many intellectuals of the time, including writers, the new fashion was a dangerous and socially harmful phenomenon that should be counteracted. Indulgence in luxury, egoism, vanity, laziness, stupidity, thoughtlessness, sometimes recklessness and lack of experience, and more often calculation and excessive ambition is the catalogue of faults most often attributed to fashionable ladies. A scholarly review of these texts confirms that Enlightenment satire was instrumental in perpetuating the stereotypical image of the fashionable lady who places excessive importance on her elegant appearance. From the satirical pen of the authors, a critical reflection always emerges that this snobbish, uncritical pursuit of the French took place without regard to the consequences, not only financial but also cultural.Cudzoziemski strój oświeceniowej damy modnej, podobnie jak męski frak, był synonimem bezrefleksyjnego naśladownictwa obcych polskiej kulturze wzorów obyczajowych. Zjawisko to wielokrotnie krytykowano w ówczesnych tekstach publicystycznych i literackich, w tym również w satyrze. Tytułowy problem zaprezentowany został w niniejszym artykule na przykładzie trzech utworów satyrycznych autorstwa Elżbiety Drużbackiej, Ignacego Krasickiego i Jana Gorczyczewskiego. Ich zróżnicowana przynależność czasowa (faza prekursorska, dojrzała i schyłkowa epoki polskiego oświecenia) pokazuje, iż manifestująca się w stroju modnych dam fascynacja kulturą znad Sekwany była zjawiskiem eksponowanym w literaturze już od schyłku czasów saskich aż po epokę postanisławowską. Co przy tym znamienne i co poświadcza lektura wskazanych utworów, damy z elit – w ubiorach, zachowaniu, zainteresowaniach – chciały również naśladować szlachcianki i tak nowa kultura rozpowszechniona w Warszawie przenikała za ich sprawą na prowincję. W ocenie wielu ówczesnych intelektualistów, w tym także literatów, nowa moda była zjawiskiem groźnym, szkodliwym społecznie, któremu należało przeciwdziałać. Lubowanie się w zbytkach, egoizm, próżność, lenistwo, głupota, bezrefleksyjność, czasem lekkomyślność i brak doświadczenia, a częściej wyrachowanie i nadmierne ambicje to katalog wad najczęściej przypisywanych modnym damom. Badawczy ogląd wymienionych tekstów potwierdza fakt, że oświeceniowa satyra w znaczącym stopniu przyczyniła się do utrwalenia stereotypowego wizerunku modnej damy, przywiązującej nadmierną wagę do swojego strojnego wyglądu. Spod satyrycznego pióra autorów wyłania się również każdorazowo krytyczna refleksja, iż ta snobistyczna, bezkrytyczna pogoń za francuszczyzną odbywała się bez oglądania się na konsekwencje nie tylko finansowe, ale i kulturowe

„Niewygodna dla władzy” twórczość poetycka Antoniego Goreckiego

Literary work of Antoni Gorecki essentially resembles so-called occasional literature. The poet repeatedly made comments about the current political and social events by the use of a pen. He wrote political fables which were his real predilection and brought him the most popularity. This genre, by the frequent use of the so-called Aesopian language, created the opportunity to smuggle content inconvenient for the tsarism. Not always, however, did the poet manage to avoid a conflict with the censorship. As a result, he was even imprisoned. Significantly, Gorecki’s work was censored even after his death, as the examples can be found in the Writings of Leipzig collected editions of 1877 and 1886.Najpopularniejsza łódzka księgarnia, należąca do rodziny Fiszerów, podobnie jak wiele łódzkich firm zanotowała ogromne straty w związku z wybuchem I wojny światowej. Straty te wynikały zarówno z konfiskat i rekwizycji prowadzonych przez niemieckie władze okupacyjne, jak i braku zapłaty za przyjęte wcześniej zamówienia. W aktach Komisji Szacunkowej Miejscowej znajdują się opisy strat wraz z charakterystyką okoliczności ich powstania, a także zeznania świadków tj. zarówno pracowników księgarni, jak i innych firm z nią współpracujących. Dokumentacja ta jest cennym źródłem do poznania dziejów łódzkiego księgarstwa w latach Wielkiej Wojny

Toward a unified model of mobile Business Intelligence (m-BI) acceptance and use

Factors affecting mobile business intelligence (m-BI) acceptance and use have become an increasingly important topic in practice due to the growing complexity of organizations, and their underlying information systems (IS). Since, one can notice considerable interest in m-BI, however, to the best of our knowledge few studies (if any) aim to synthesize the existing body of knowledge with regards to the factors affecting m-BI acceptance and use. To fill this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review and summarized the current state of the art. By addressing research questions, we identified a set of five factors, namely: Perceived Value, Perceived Ease of Use, Managerial Attitudes, Facilitating Conditions and Quality of Information, and specified their inter-relationships. Moreover, we introduce an acceptance model (m-BIAM) on behavioral intention and use mobile Business Intelligence solutions. The contribution of this study lies in these evidence-based findings, which lay a solid foundation for further studies in the extent of testing and evaluating the m-BIAM model, targeted at delivering more evidence to confirm its validity and predictive power

Organizational Ethics, Position and Their Relationship to Gender, Before and During Pandemic

This research investigates the levels of organizational ethics (OETH) among knowledge workers (KW), using their work information and communication technologies (ICT) with their executive position (supervisor/subordinate), in regional enterprises in Poland before and during the COVID19 pandemic. We analyzed levels of OETH and its three dimensions as organizational optimism (ETO), corporate social responsibility (CSR), top management action (TMA). We conducted our study twice, using an online survey among 137 KW before and 127 KW during a pandemic, combining random and snowball sampling to select data. We used multivariate statistical methods such as analysis of variance and causal moderation analysis to estimate the indirect effect of gender, the effect of the pandemic, as well as their interaction in the relation between position and OETH and its subscales.. Our findings show superiors manifested higher levels of OETH assessment than their subordinates, especially before the pandemic. Both groups displayed a pessimistic and low level of OETH, especially ETO, before the pandemic, and on the contrary, increased significantly to an average level during the pandemic. Gender and the pandemic affected the levels of OETH and occurred to be moderators of the considered relationship

Job satisfaction of IT professionals in Poland: does business competence matter?

This paper examines the effects of business competence on the job satisfaction of Information Technology (IT) professionals in Poland. The necessary data is collected from a survey conducted among 391 IT professionals working in various companies in Poland. The results of the analysis indicate that business competence, in general, positively affects the job satisfaction of IT professionals in transition economies. However, business competence seems to have mixed effects on various aspects of job satisfaction. Although business competence affects satisfaction with co-workers, supervision and work itself, the surveyed IT professionals feel that business competence does not have any substantial effect on their salary level and professional promotions. The theoretical implication of this study is that systematic development of human capital by building business competence will have positive effects on the job satisfaction of IT professionals in transition economies. This paper also has a practical implication for managers in transition economies seeking improvements in productivity as it may help them to devise a compensation and promotion system that would better account for competency in their employees