The Transformation of Poland’s Economic System: 1985–1995

Proceeding from Lord Acton’s insight that “exile is the nursery of nationality,” this paper examines a peculiar historical instance of dislocation as a relevant matrix for the articulation of national identity. I inquire into aspects of the elaboration of French national consciousness among French émigrés of the revolutionary period in Russia, approaching the subject at two levels: first, the maîtres à danser, the run-of- the-mill émigrés who abandon cosmopolitan certitudes or pretensions of a “monde français” and abstractions of dynastic loyalty, in favour of nostalgic attachment to a tangible patrie, very much at odds with the Russian otherness into which they have been thrust. Second, the maîtres à penser, those émigré thinkers in whom the Revolution provokes a reconsideration of established universals and who conceptualize Russia in terms of a project to reconcile universal and particular or national values. I examine the dilemmas and ultimate failure of such a projection by focusing on the work of Joseph de Maistre. On both levels, the historical case studied here is an exemplification of the proposition that nationalism is founded on a disenchantment with the world, and that physical estrangement from both the world to which one believes oneself to belong as well as spiritual estrangement from the world in which one treads, may provide a critical context for defining collective identity.     

Historical Heritage in Contemporary Polish Law Relating to Foreigners

The Polish diaspora living around the world is best described as an inheritance of the turbulent history of Poland. For decades, citizens of Polish origin from various states have been trying to maintain ties with their kin and country. During communist times, citizens of Eastern European countries (including the Soviet republics) could not enjoy free contacts across borders. Poland's accession to the European Union and Schengen area has created new barriers for third country nationals willing to come and stay in Poland. Therefore, any facilitation or exemption from visa requirements is very attractive for them. Legal instruments relating to foreigners which have recently been adopted in Poland affect the situation of Polish minorities and the rights of their members. The author reveals the historical roots of the legal solutions and indicates the specificity of Polish immigration law. First, she considers the historical background of the links between immigration law and minority rights, particularly in the area of economy, culture and education. She comes to the conclusion that well-constructed immigration provisions may be useful in filling gaps in the protection of minorities and that the new ways of acquisition of citizenship may to some extent compensate old harms and injustice.     

Comparing pre-war and forced Ukrainian migrants in Poland: Challenges for the labour market and prospects for integration

Before full-scale war broke out in 2022, over 1 million Ukrainians resided legally in Poland. Within weeks of Russia's aggression, around 1.5 million new Ukrainian forced migrants had arrived, many of whom remain in Poland. As of September 2023, 970,000 Ukrainian refugees were still in Poland, where they enjoyed temporary protection status. This paper analyses data from a 2022 survey of both forcibly displaced and pre-war Ukrainian migrants with the aim of establishing what measures are needed to facilitate the economic integration of the former group. The two cohorts differ in terms of gender, age, family status, ways of seeking employment, employment situation and aspirations. Although 66 per cent of respondents had completed tertiary education, only 30 per cent of the forcibly displaced group had Polish-language skills. The paper recommends strategies for the provision of language education along with solutions to enable the labour market participation of this group and otherwise support their integration.     

Multi-couple reflecting team: preliminary report

The aim of therapeutic help in marital crisis is to break the vicious circle of mutual hurtful accusations. The method that the authors present below involves a group of couples working within a closed cycle of meetings. In the course of successive group meetings, the various couples act as reflecting teams (RTs) for each other. This achieves two objectives: the couple recounting their crisis receives nonthreatening feedback, which helps them to implement positive changes and break out of the self-perpetuating destructive interaction. In addition, the couples acting as the RT learn nonjudgmental, nontheorizing and affirmative communication.     

Extreme ranking analysis in robust ordinal regression

We extend the principle of robust ordinal regression with an analysis of extreme ranking results. In our proposal, we consider the whole set of instances of a preference model that is compatible with preference information provided by the DM. We refer to both, the well-known UTA^GMS method, which builds the set of general additive value functions compatible with DM's preferences, and newly introduced in this paper PROMETHEE^GKS, which constructs the set of compatible outranking models via robust ordinal regression. Then, we consider all complete rankings that follow the use of the compatible preference models, and we determine the best and the worst attained ranks for each alternative. In this way, we are able to assess its position in an overall ranking, and not only in terms of pairwise comparisons, as it is the case in original robust ordinal regression methods. Additionally, we analyze the ranges of possible comprehensive scores (values or net outranking flows). We also discuss extensions of the presented approach on other multiple criteria problems than ranking. Finally, we show how the presented methodology can be applied in practical decision support, reporting results of three illustrative studies.     

Beyond Markowitz with multiple criteria decision aiding

The paper is about portfolio selection in a non-Markowitz way, involving uncertainty modeling in terms of a series of meaningful quantiles of probabilistic distributions. Considering the quantiles as evaluation criteria of the portfolios leads to a multiobjective optimization problem which needs to be solved using a Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) method. The primary method we propose for solving this problem is an Interactive Multiobjective Optimization (IMO) method based on so-called Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA). IMO-DRSA is composed of two phases: computation phase, and dialogue phase. In the computation phase, a sample of feasible portfolio solutions is calculated and presented to the Decision Maker (DM). In the dialogue phase, the DM indicates portfolio solutions which are relatively attractive in a given sample; this binary classification of sample portfolios into ‘good’ and ‘others’ is an input preference information to be analyzed using DRSA; DRSA is producing decision rules relating conditions on particular quantiles with the qualification of supporting portfolios as ‘good’; a rule that best fits the current DM’s preferences is chosen to constrain the previous multiobjective optimization in order to compute a new sample in the next computation phase; in this way, the computation phase yields a new sample including better portfolios, and the procedure loops a necessary number of times to end with the most preferred portfolio. We compare IMO-DRSA with two representative MCDA methods based on traditional preference models: value function (UTA method) and outranking relation (ELECTRE IS method). The comparison, which is of methodological nature, is illustrated by a didactic example.     

Multivariate Matsumoto–Yor property is rather restrictive

Matsumoto and Yor [2001. An analogue of Pitman's 2M-X$2M-X$ theorem for exponential Wiener functionals. Part II: the role of the GIG laws. Nagoya Math. J. 162, 65–86] discovered an interesting invariance property of a product of the generalized inverse Gaussian (GIG) and the gamma distributions. For univariate random variables or symmetric positive definite random matrices it is a characteristic property for this pair of distributions. It appears that for random vectors the Matsumoto–Yor property characterizes only very special families of multivariate GIG and gamma distributions: components of the respective random vectors are grouped into independent subvectors, each subvector having linearly dependent components. This complements the version of the multivariate Matsumoto–Yor property on trees and related characterization obtained in Massam and Weso?owski [2004. The Matsumoto–Yor property on trees. Bernoulli 10, 685–700].     

Comparison of Kernel Discriminant Coordinates Algorithms

The construction of kernel discriminant coordinates reduces to the solution of a generalized eigenvalue problem in which both matrices are nonnegative definite. Six different algorithms for solving that problem are described, and the performance of these algorithms is tested on 26 different datasets. The percentage of misclassifications using a linear discriminant function is noted, and the algorithms’ running times are ascertained. Classification is also performed in the space of classical discriminant coordinates.     

Some optimal block designs with nested rows and columns for research on alternative methods of limiting slug damage

Some criteria of optimality of a block design with nested rows and columns are considered. The criteria are based on the eigenvalues of the information matrix C or on the eigenvalues of the matrix C with respect to a diagonal matrix R of treatment replications. New constructions of some optimal block designs with nested rows and columns are presented for application to special plant protection experiments.     

Management innovation,pro-innovation organisational culture and enterprise performance: testing the mediation effect

The interest in management innovation (MI) is growing and the conviction about its significant role in boosting an enterprise’s competitive advantage and performance has recently gained ground. The studies on MI and its relationships with enterprise performance, which are relatively scarce in literature, indicate the complexity of these relationships. This inspired us to propose the management innovation construct and its operationalisation, which allowed for the empirical verification of the relationships between management innovation and enterprise performance. Simultaneously, we adopted the hypothesis on the mediating role of pro-innovation organisational culture. The aim of this article, therefore, is to study the relationships between MI and enterprise performance as well as to determine what role is played by pro-innovation organisational culture in these relationships. In order to do that, we conducted a survey of 301 companies based in Poland. Our research results confirmed the existence of relationships between management innovation and enterprise performance in the survey sample, although they were not very strong. Additionally, the hypothesis about the mediating role of organisational culture was also partially supported. The results of our study enrich the knowledge about the role of MI in stimulating enterprise performance and the role of pro-innovation organisational culture. We also discuss the implications for further research and management practice.