Current Managerial Challenges in the cee Region: Introduction to the Thematic Issue
piotr trapczynski
Poznan University of Economics and Business, Poland piotr. trapczynski@ue.poznan.pl
lukasz puSlecki
Poznan University of Economics and Business, Poland lukasz.puslecki@ue.poznan.pl
The aim of the present issue of the Management journal is to provide a contribution to exploring one of the key aspects related to the journal's positioning, expressed in its very title: management. More than two and a half decades have gone by since the start of the transformation in the region of Central and Eastern Europe (cee). In line with the emergence of new businesses in the region, as well as the inflow of foreign investment attracted by the wave of privatisation opportunities in the region, there has been room for the adoption of modern managerial practices. These pertain to concepts of corporate growth, including the development of international markets, as well as innovative business models. Given the still early stage of development of firms from the region, they can constitute a promising lab for exploring the aforesaid issues.
The present issue is a collection of contributions submitted to the international conference focused around international business in the cee region entitled 'International Business and Research in the cee Region: Why Is It Worth Doing,' organised by the cee Chapter of the Academy of International Business (aib-cee) and sgh Warsaw School of Economics in Warsaw from 17 to 19 September 2015. The papers belong to two categories. The first one revolves around determinants of outward and inward fdi from and into the cee region, whereby these contributions link the internationalisation of local firms or the inflow of foreign investment into the region to firm and regional competitiveness, respectively. The second part is related to modern concepts of corporate growth, pertaining to the use of e-commerce and inter-firm alliances. In addition, this special issue concludes with a meta-level contribution related to legal issues of open access to academic publications. Given the surge of publications from the cee region in the discipline of management and eco-
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nomics, the issue of increasing the visibility of cEE-based research deserves particular attention.
The first contribution to the issue entitled 'A Typology of International Strategies for Hungarian Professional Sports Clubs' is authored by Miklos Kozma and Krisztina Andrâs. The objective of their research project was to examine how league strength explains the observed differences between the international strategies of professional sports clubs in Hungary. Three case studies were made primarily based on the content analysis of management interviews, cross-checked with data from sports databases and corporate documentation. They identified three types of international strategy followed by professional sports clubs in Hungary. The typology highlights the importance of having a competitive product professional clubs may bring to the international marketplace. Hence, governments and local municipalities are advised to focus their support on sports where there is a team with reasonable chances to win trophies at international level. For club managers, the implication is that strategic focus on improving service provision and sales is critical even if they receive windfall support from government.
The second paper is devoted to the reshoring trend in the cEE. Michal Mlody in his article entitled 'Reshoring Trend and cee: an Assessment of Possible Scenarios on the Example of Poland' set out to assess the possible scenarios for Poland. The offshoring phenomenon, that dominated a large part of the discourse on international production from the eighties of the last century, is losing on the dynamics in recent years, primarily due to narrowing wage gap between developed and developing countries. The simultaneous emergence of other factors resulted in the emergence of new trends of international business location which concern in particular companies that have earlier relocated their business processes abroad. Reshoring phenomenon, that should be basically understood as a partial or total relocation of previously offshored company's activities to the home country or a new destination, is one of the major topics of current public debates among scientist and policymakers in several developed countries. However, the results of the author's analysis indicate that reshoring may also have some effects - positive and negative, in the case of Central and Eastern European countries. The research has been based on conclusions drawn from the critical study of literature and data of selected international institutions.
The subsequent paper by Magdalena Grochal-Brejdak 'Methodology of Research on Internationalisation Process of E-Commerce Enterprises' is yet another contribution to the internationalisation of an
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Current Managerial Challenges in the cee Region
emerging country, based on the context of e-commerce enterprises. The aim of this article is to review research methodologies applied to research related to the internationalisation of e-commerce enterprises with a particular stress on the research resulting in the process description of the internationalisation of e-commerce firms. As a result of the critical literature review, qualitative methods were found to prevail in the research of the internationalisation of ecommerce firms along with the lack of the processual description of the internationalisation of such firms. The antipositivist ontology postulated by Welch and Paavilainen Mantymaki seems to be the best approach to research on internationalisation process of ecommerce firms and is visible in interpretive perspective in methodology of extant research.
The fourth contribution draws the attention of the reader to the development of modes of inter firm cooperation. tukasz Puslecki, author of the paper called 'Development of Modes of Cooperation: An Opportunity for Open Innovation Alliances in Polish Biophar-maceutical Industry,' presents the development of modes of cooperation in the biopharmaceutical industry, referring to the latest data from the asap (the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals). Examples of different modes of cooperation in contemporary economy, as well as potential cooperation between academia, institutions and business in the field of biopharmaceutical industry in Poland are discussed. Biopharmaceutical companies try to implement new strategies to transfer their research processes to a higher level, often using open innovation model as an additional tool for developing new products and services. Thanks to the cooperation with universities in the framework of open innovation alliances, through joint work with academic researchers, biopharmaceutical companies are more successful in identifying disease mechanisms, implementation of better medical therapy for patients as well as in development of new drugs.
Finally, Joanna Hetman-Krajewska in her paper 'Open Access to Scientific Works: Axiology, History and Chosen Aspects of Copyright Solutions' aims to outline legal and practical problems concerning Open Access to scientific works - the basic phenomenon tending to ensure free development of sciences both in the context of local, European and international cooperation and progress. Problems concerning Open Access to human creative works, especially scientific works is complex. Development of research and growing number of scholarly papers, as well as other materials demand systemic solutions - both in a national and international perspective. The author
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describes the history of Open Access movement, starting in the 1980s with the development of free software trend and followed by Creative Commons licensing solutions. The first decade of the new millennium has brought many great strides in popularization of Open Access. Many initiatives of this kind have appeared launched by various actors. The basic legal problems of Open Access are obtaining research materials to on-line repositories and - on the other hand -liability of repository providers in the context of potential breaches of copyright.
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