"Nostalgia for the future…" : prosthesis as a popcultural weapon?

Prostheses-especially those created by prosthetic limb designer Sophie de Oliveira Barata-are not treated as disempowering artefacts, but as a McLuhanian extension of man: a tool for creating identity and style while keeping individuality and offering liberation from victim status. Prostheses are not a weakness but a strength, a potential. Moreover, technology is not gender neutral, as prostheses can provide new options for women. "Glamputees" reinterpret notions of the female body, beauty standards, minorities' spaces, etc. On the other hand, so-called alternative modelling recreates the traditional image of woman. In the following article, I would like to show the dynamics of the "extended" or "bionic" body and the social environment by rereading prosthesis through the theories of Vivian Sobchack, Anne Marie Balsamo, and Donna Haraway. In this way, feminist discourse enhances ambivalent perspectives on the phenomenon of alternative limbs

Tactile epistemology : sensoria and the postcolonial

In this article the author focuses on the so called "tactile epistemology" in postolonial studies - different cognitive and representational modes that enable create subversive narrations negotiating new relations between centre and margins. Affective, multisensory, synaesthetic body is an archive of power relations, an experience of colonization and - most of all - a discoursive transgression, reversing ideology based on the Western eye. The main goal of this article is to present three most influential theoretical stances connecting sensoria with the Other. The concepts of Laura U. Marks, Milena Marinkova, and Sara Ahmed are illustrated with the examples form Claire Denis’ and Urszula Antoniak’s oeuvre

Unseen war? : hackers, tactical media, and their depiction in Hollywood cinema

Emerging controversies about WikiLeaks' contribution to Donald Trump's electoral triumph and the ongoing persona-non-grata status of Edward Snowden highlight the notion of hacking in the modern world. Hackers used to be dualistically stereotyped on one hand as black hats, criminals and cyberpunk/cypherpunk hidden figures, and on the other as whistle-blowers, open access activists and hacktivists whose actions are potentially subversive. Film coverage of hackers and their tactics shows a paranoid and militarized vision of the world, with grey eminence often depicted either as a threat, or as survivors. Hence, from WarGames (1983, John Bedham), TRON (1982, Steven Lisberger) and Hackers (1995, Iain Softley) to The Fifth Estate (2013, Bill Condon), Live Free or Die Hard (2007, Len Wiseman) to Jason Bourne (2016, Paul Greengrass), hacking seems to have emerged as the avant-garde of militarized social space-as its main weapon and fundamental defence. Pop culture feeds itself with this ambiguity as long as it accommodates the dualistic needs of its receivers: a countercultural anti-hero becomes a scapegoat while a general sense of insecurity predominates. Distrust in technology and underground experts is simultaneous with redemption narratives about disclosing corporate/state/elite conspiracies and is heavily influenced by current non-cinematic events. This paper is an examination of hackers' cultural impact and their connection with tactical media through subversive actions. It becomes essential to decode their manipulated or simplified public image, especially with ongoing progressive politicization of hacking and its significance

Sustainable business management

Sustainability is understood as the right relationship between product, technological and economic development, social development, protection of the natural environment and care for future generations. Sustainable enterprises can be called organisations that respect the principles of sustainable development in their activities. According to these principles, the functions of planning, organising, motivating and controlling are important elements of the organisation, hence we are talking about the need to implement sustainable management. The chapter will present the content of business models based on the sustainable management of organisations in the context of their development, thus creating prospects for the future, taking into account such areas as sustainable production, sustainable supply chains, sustainable marketing, sustainable servitisation, sustainable research and development, and sustainable HRM

Bolesław Świderski

Dynamika systematycznego wzrostu, nowoczesna przestrzeń intelektu, labirynt znaków, magia zaangażowanych w swoją pracę ludzi z pasją – to tylko kilka haseł, które przychodzą na myśl, kiedy chcemy przywołać nazwę Biblioteki Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego i 70 lat jej historii. Łódź przed dwoma wiekami powstawała z tradycji niejednorodnych, i podobnie powstawał – jako mozaika różnych treści intelektualnych – Uniwersytet Łódzki

AL tools applied in HR 4.0 : research findings

Purpose: The execution of the processes of HR in organizations is closely connected with technological progress, which has a significant impact on the way of managing the work of employees. The aim of this paper is to present research relating to the identification of modern IT tools that support the processes of HR in the chosen enterprises. Design/methodology/approach: Interviews were used as a research tool, which were aimed at the employees of HR departments in 8 enterprises. Findings: As the analysis of the interviews indicates, the emerging new tools for the enhancement of the management of the work of employees are becoming more recognizable among personnel specialists and are implemented in their organizations. The inquisitiveness in this area on the part of the HR employees precedes the tools implemented (this is confirmed by the responses relating to the acquisition of information on one’s own and later presenting the propositions of their implementation in a specific organization). Research limitations/implications: The research findings illustrated in this paper constitute a pilot study for the preparation of an application for an international research project. This also gives rise to the awareness of the existing limitations in the research conducted. Practical implications: In the future, it would be worth acquiring HR information from a greater number of organizations that are differentiated in terms of sectors. Originality/value: The article deals with a relatively rare topic in the national literature – the software for HR departments was compared

The impact of training on employee effectiveness

It is commonly believed that training leads to an increase in the competencies of employees and therefore an increase in their performance. This view is based on the assumption that companies and organizations lack necessary competencies and that this shortage limits their effectiveness. The second assumption is that the increase in abilities achieved in the training process will translate into improved results. In the following article, we present an alternative thesis in which training can and often does, lead to a decrease in productivity. We present two reasons why training can lead to poorer results: 1. relative oversupply of competencies in the company and the associated misidentification of the competency gap, and 2. apparent efficiency gains - i.e. not leading to improved results - in a situation where there are productivity bottlenecks that are not a result of work efficiency. This thesis is supported by research conducted during observations made by one of the authors, which is presented in the form of observations and comments. The second is the ValueView method, the results of which, are referred to in the text. In the summary of the article, we indicate ways in which the planning of training events can be improved, their subordination to short-term business objectives, and the use of modern techniques of organizational planning

Decoupling Hypothesis and the Financial Crisis

The purpose of this paper was to present the decoupling hypothesis which says that the performance of emerging economies becomes relatively independent of the changes in advanced economies, and to empirically verify this hypothesis. The Christiano-Fitzgerald band-pass filter and spectral analyses have been applied to examine the hypothesis. On the basis of obtained results, comparing the deviations of GDPs from their long-term trend, it seems that the synchronization of cycles between emerging and advanced economies was already high before the crisis. The last global crisis, especially if time shifts between the countries are taken into account, even increased the synchronization of the economies. Therefore, this paper presents evidence against the decoupling hypothesis, and at the same time it raises doubts whether the high GDP growth rates in emerging economies can be sustainable in the presence of the slow-down in the advanced economies. The paper analyzes the situation from the Poland’s point of view as the country which is on the verge of joining the ERM2 system and adopting the euro (synchronization divagations are important for this decision) and because Poland is a good example of an emerging economy