We are pleased to introduce our 17th and latest volume from our regular conference: Business and Non-profit Organizations Facing Increased Competitions and Growing Customers’ Demands, which contains articles highlighting the problems of contemporary for-profit and non-profit organizations. The added value is the inclusion of multifaceted aspects of an organization’s functioning, including the sectoral and industrial view. The diversity of the approach to the problems of organization, management, business and economy becomes a valuable interdisciplinary view of the economic reality that surrounds us. The monograph is divided into four sections. In the first section: Business and non-profit organizations as the objects of research, articles are exposing the area of strategic management, including a museum as a research object, surgical workflow, the performance of cultural organizations, and organizational forms of housing resource management. In addition, this section covers a process-oriented view of management, including process maturity of the organization and process approach to the analysis of creative capital; and mixed project-management methodology. In a separate thread, there are articles related to public university mergers based on an example of two academic case studies; the analysis of scientific excellence as a factor influencing academic involvement; and the nature of competition for non-profit and for-profit organizations. The second section, entitled Modern tools for business and non-profit organization management, opens with an article on design thinking and the TransistorsHead tool used to analyze teams through organizational terms. Other tools used in eye tracking, such as enova365 and Soneta, are presented in an article on the optimization of an IT system. In the context of profiling scientific research, not only in the area of academic entrepreneurship but also in the search for research gaps, bibliometrics is undoubtedly a useful tool discussed in a further article. In another article, an attractive tool for competence analysis is the business model and the construction of the competence assessment method, which could prove to be helpful in assessing the effectiveness of professional careers. Other articles in this section feature the concept of innovation and knowledge management; medical data management based on a precise legal basis; external financing and its impact on the flexibility of enterprises; and a systemic, process and resource approach to port modularity. In the next section: Business and non-profit organizations in a market economy, the primary thematic topic is corporate social responsibility, client capital creation, and social entrepreneurship. We note the greater emphasis on the social aspects of the organization’s functioning and on the social economy. The human thread and the so-called ecosystem in business are becoming more and more desirable, and the perspective of business is changing: from a profit-oriented one towards a more societal one. In the last section, entitled Business and non-profit organizations - sectoral and industrial aspects, there are articles discussing the issues of organization in macroeconomic terms. This section opens with an article presenting the structural characteristics of industrial clusters and research streams in this area. Subsequently, we have articles that present: the municipality, from the point of view of the configuration of the network of relations between stakeholders, and their involvement in the creation of smart specialization strategies; the determinants of employment change in the Polish services sector; consumer awareness of the credit market; the transparency of public finances; local food and regional products; consumer behaviour in Ukraine; as well as, trade credit, profitability and leverage in Polish companies. Every year, this monograph is built on articles that present an up-to-date view of the business and geo-economic reality that surrounds us, whose organizations form the backbone of the economy and its sectors. The dynamics of changes are so significant that such studies bring readers closer to current trends and draw the interest of researchers.

From the perspective of commercial and non-commercial organizations, this monograph with contemporary organizational and management problems, focus on four thematic areas. Traditionally, the first one is concentrating the reader’s attention on the internal aspects of the organization’s functioning as an object of research. In this regard, articles related to the concept of corporate social responsibility in two ways: organizational research and bibliometric analysis. The authors used an analogical (bibliometric) approach to examine trends in publishing for the concept of learning organizations. In this part of the discussion, the social aspect has been strongly displayed, also thanks to the social capital and enterprise. Another topic in this section is the role of the workers’ knowledge in creating innovative solutions, emphasizing the role of trust and culture-rich collaboration between employees, employees’ participation in creating projects, and organizational change. In addition, it discusses the role of information and knowledge networks and sharing knowledge among employees, which does remain without influence on the shaping of individual employees’ careers. Slightly different from the other articles, though set in this section, there is an article referring to the organizational pathology. These considerations are much more valuable, usually because of the difficult access to negative information. The next section presents articles in the context of the modern tools used in the management of commercial and non-commercial organizations. This part of the discussion starts an article about forecasting methods and modern models of business management. In opposition to these considerations, the problem of unused, modern management methods in the local government sector, remains valid. Also, it refers to social media as a source of customer knowledge and management control, which should be considered as a strong and innovative determinant influencing the development of contemporary management methods of a modern enterprise. Interesting considerations are included in the article on the process management, with emphasis on the dynamic management of business processes and IT systems that go with it. The other articles present the concepts of the risk management model in a technology project, business model used in franchising, and the concept of accountability in conjunction with the development of innovation thanks to negotiating the role of intellectual capital. The modern market economy forces organizations to develop their ability to adapt to the conditions by improving their organization continually. It shows how modern-day commercial and non-commercial organizations are competing in a competitive market. This section opens the article, referring to the social competences of students developed during their studies and the competences of the future, which were studied and compared in two universities. The integral part of the organization’s functioning of the organization in the environment is their broadly understood cooperation for the implementation of the objectives and achieving a competitive advantage in the market. This trend covers articles referring to the participation of county in networking, modeling synergistic interrelations within the business association, or the conditions that should be met between enterprises and institutions supporting the technological development of the organization. Other considerations concern customer preferences concerning their choice of commercial banks, the factors that determine the choice of financial instruments by small and medium enterprises, or the demands of sustainable family business development. The final part of the articles is related to a broader perspective, and so the functioning of the organization from a sectoral perspective and across industries. A distinctive feature is a sectoral approach to knowledge-based business services, the determinants of knowledge-based products in the pharmaceutical industry, and the behavior of competing companies in the chocolate and confectionery industry. A separate topic in this section is the concept of capturing value or the value in a sectoral approach. The issues related to the protection of personal data in the healthcare sector, patent activity of enterprises in the technology park, as well as the management of resources in the cluster. The prepared monograph is an interdisciplinary compendium of knowledge on the functioning of both commercial and non-commercial organizations in the context of three perspectives: micro, meso, and macro. The advantage of this type of studies is modern and up-to-date look at the problems of management, organization behavior, or the functioning of the organizations in the sector.

The essence of the functioning of any organization, whether commercial or non-profit, is to provide value to groups of recipients whose expectations undoubtedly change over time. Various competition mechanisms in the market apply to both business-oriented organizations and organizations operating in the sphere of public utilities. This monograph includes examples of the problems facing contemporary organizations, and at the same time provides evidence, confirmed by research results, that indicates the direction of current changes. The analysis of changes taking place in organizations was carried out in many dimensions. The content layout adopted in the monograph presents four research perspectives, where the subject of the research is the organization; the modern tools used in organization management, the impact of the market economy on organizations, and sectoral or industry aspects of the organization’s functioning. In the first chapter, four studies related to commercial and non-commercial organizations have been collated. Researchers of academic organizations who in order to meet the expectations of students increase their activity in the field of entrepreneurship and their support for the most talented students. Both examples show the need to conduct research, develop knowledge about own activities, and focus on the needs of the environment. Entrepreneurial universities are open to the implementation of joint ventures with entities in their environment, which affect the development of the university, its students, as well as the entities. Entrepreneurship, which is based on the ability to take advantage of market opportunities, also creates opportunities for developing the ability to flexibly shape and adapt programs, methods and operating principles to the growing expectations of their environment. The ability to develop your potential as well as the potential of your students plays a crucial role. In the pursuit of excellence, a strong focus should be placed on talented students and the development of all possible forms of support that could determine an output of graduates with particularly high development potential. In the research presented in this monograph, the authors compare the activity of universities in the USA, the Netherlands, and Poland in the area of talent development. The comparative analysis becomes a valuable source of indicating imperfections, but also examples of potential forms of positive activity in this area. Equally important in this part of the monograph is the research on the learning organization. Through a bibliometric analysis, the author identified the fields of research on the learning organization. In addition to research areas related to various dimensions, primarily human, cultural and managerial, the types of organizations in which such research is most often conducted have been indicated. They also include the organizations of the two sectors presented: education and healthcare. The same part of the monograph also presents the results of research in the hotel sector, where the main research problem was the creation of customer value, taking into account the conditions stimulating the dynamics of the business models of hotel enterprises. Referring to business models was considered important because of the significance of decision-making patterns that help to build a competitive advantage and achieve market success by creating value for customers. The concept of creating value for customers is currently treated in cross-sectoral or industry categories and is a universal approach to managing organizations. The second chapter of the monograph presents research on the modern tools used in organization management. Concepts such as work–life balance, shaping the innovation process within the framework of decisions taken in the process, marketing communication, or the use of gamification in research and development, are examples of a wide range of relationships between today’s organization and its surroundings. Finding employees, and retaining them, is also a growing challenge in developing countries, where labor supply is steadily decreasing. The expectations of employees are increasing, especially in relation to respecting the personal, non-professional side of life. Thus, it should be recognized that research on work–life balance is a developing space for organization and management researchers. Modeling the innovation process in an organization is another research trend that is important today, especially in terms of developing competitiveness. Decision-making is one of the key components of the innovation process. This aspect, in qualitative terms, was presented in the next study in the second part of the monograph. Similarly, marketing communication is invariably an important area of research in organizations, which has evolved due to rapidly developing information technologies and, at the same time, the changing preferences of users of these technologies. The last study in this second part of the monograph relates to innovation and the use of computer games. The tools of gamification are used to shape the attitudes of individual energy consumers. The observations presented show that it is worth making attempts to use unconventional methods and tools, in this case, to develop customer knowledge and strengthen the behaviors desired in the energy market. The third chapter of the monograph is devoted to the financial aspects of the functioning of commercial and non-profit organizations in a market economy. Increasing the efficiency of public entities, specifically conditioned in economic policies and dependent on political decisions, has been the subject of numerous studies. The research study presented in the monograph refers to the relationship between financial strategies and profit management in public industrial companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. It is worth noting that no research in this field has been conducted to date in the context of the Polish capital market. The next study refers to the French market. Its purpose was to evaluate and test long-term memory in the French stock exchanges. Research results contribute significantly to explaining the lack of consensus regarding long memory in stock returns. The research covers a significant, 25-year period of operation of the Euronext platform during which 6634 observations were provided. The conclusions of the study may be particularly important for regulators and risk managers. Another study presents the results of bankruptcy risk tests for Polish and Czech logistics companies using a comprehensive classification approach. As a result of the research, a tool for risk assessment and forecasting was developed, enabling the early prediction of bankruptcy of enterprises. At the end of the third chapter of the monograph, the results of health expenditure analysis based on information provided by the Health Account System are presented. Particular attention has been focused on the programming sources of financing healthcare in new European Union countries. Socio-technical and environmental aspects of the organization are the subject of interest of researchers presenting the results of their research in the fourth chapter of the monograph. The problems of economic migration and working conditions have been the subject of interest for many years in the strongly developing trend of labor market research. The research results contained in the study relate primarily to the issues of occupational safety of Ukrainians employed in Poland. These issues are gaining importance, especially when the number of people migrating from Ukraine to Poland in search of work has been growing for several years. In the face of such a large scale of Ukrainian immigrants employed in Polish enterprises, there is still a lack of regulations protecting or securing the interests of employees and employers. The next research presentation highlights the problems of the “circular economy,” which, according to the author, is developing too slowly in Poland. The research is valuable for systematizing the idea of a circular economy based on the theoretical and practical aspects of this phenomenon. The results of the analysis are also of practical importance for the process of modeling and implementing this idea in Poland. Further, the innovation paradigm of economic health and the prosperity of society is the subject of the research carried out, based on a review of the health economy considering innovation and its impact on population growth and prosperity in the world. The research particularly highlights the consequences of socio-demographic, environmental and business changes in the field of consumer goods. The socio-technical, as well as the environmental, aspects of the organization are also included in the last study presented. The purpose of this study was to identify the attitudes of IT employees in the Polish ITC sector towards remote work. Since the effective and efficient collaboration of distributed employees performing remote work has become even more necessary for the success of projects, numerous research works are being conducted focusing on the consequences of remote work. The presented research results are an important contribution to the discussion of researchers and management practitioners. By publishing this monograph, which covers a wide spectrum of research problems in contemporary commercial and non-profit organizations, the editors and authors presenting the results of their research express a hope that they are contributing to the widespread dissemination and enrichment of knowledge and, consequently, socio-economic development.

Decision support systems (DSS) are widely touted for their effectiveness in aiding decision making, particularly across a wide and diverse range of industries including healthcare, business, and engineering applications. The concepts, principles, and theories of enhanced decision making are essential points of research as well as the exact methods, tools, and technologies being implemented in these industries. From both a standpoint of DSS interfaces, namely the design and development of these technologies, along with the implementations, including experiences and utilization of these tools, one can get a better sense of how exactly DSS has changed the face of decision making and management in multi-industry applications. Furthermore, the evaluation of the impact of these technologies is essential in moving forward in the future. The Research Anthology on Decision Support Systems and Decision Management in Healthcare, Business, and Engineering explores how decision support systems have been developed and implemented across diverse industries through perspectives on the technology, the utilizations of these tools, and from a decision management standpoint. The chapters will cover not only the interfaces, implementations, and functionality of these tools, but also the overall impacts they have had on the specific industries mentioned. This book also evaluates the effectiveness along with benefits and challenges of using DSS as well as the outlook for the future. This book is ideal for decision makers, IT consultants and specialists, software developers, design professionals, academicians, policymakers, researchers, professionals, and students interested in how DSS is being used in different industries.

Sustainable value management reveals a new space for studying business models. The traditional approach is based on the assumption that the goal of any business is to make money. All decisions regarding supply and production should be made to maximize profit. The discrepancy in creating non-economic value is sometimes the result of separating ownership from control over an enterprise. Although shareholders are interested in maximizing profit, management that actually makes decisions can also pursue other goals. In addition to economic aspects, the management intentions of modern managers are also influenced by factors arising from the organizational culture built, co-created within the organization and sometimes with the participation of external actors such as suppliers and customers. The sources of the creation of social values will be the management intentions of top management, often initiated by the adopted values and rules on the basis of which resources are bound within the structure of the business model. The value of sustainability is based on the identification of those creative sources that relate to economic and social value. Economic value is created through social value and vice versa. This allows the complementarity of the value created to be mutually supportive. The business model that integrates both of these values should be more resistant to crises than the one that is oriented only toward producing economic value. Concurrent implementation of economic and social goals increases resilience and affects the success of modern business models. This is due to the specificity of the business ecosystem that is built as part of the business model, which, in essence, is based on the use of social factors to merge the business model into a complex ecosystem capable of producing value.

The EU has experienced serious economic and political crises such as the sovereign debt crisis and Brexit in the past few years. However, despite these issues, the EU has implemented considerable institutional, fiscal, and collective improvements during the unification process to continue as a significant actor in the global economy. The Handbook of Research on Social and Economic Development in the European Union provides a multidisciplinary evaluation of the institutional, economic, and social development of the European Union and makes inferences for the future dynamics and collaborations of the EU, the global economy, and other countries. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as energy security, gender discrimination, and global economics, this book is ideally designed for government officials, policymakers, world leaders, politicians, diplomats, international relations officers, economists, business professionals, historians, market analysts, academicians, researchers, and students concerned about the multifaceted integration processes surrounding the EU.

The first part of this volume broadens the understanding of contemporary industrial policy in local, regional, national, and international contexts. The chapter by Wojnicka-Sycz (2020) undertakes one of the most important challenges in RIS3, i.e. the evaluation of the impact of regional SS industries on the development of Polish regions. Based on the spatial panel models for 2012–2017, she reveals the positive impact of SS industries’ employment dynamics on regional GDP per capita. The chapter responds to the research gap in a direct measurement of how SS areas affect regional development. The results provide the rationale for policy-makers to pursue these strategies further. The chapter contributes to regional New Industrial Policy by proving the efficiency of SS in strengthening regional performance. Factors and barriers to the development of smart mobility in mediumsized Polish cities are the focus of the chapter by Kachniewska (2020). The author applies a comprehensive set of methods to tackle this issue and identifies the conditions for smart mobility, drawing primarily on expert opinions. The results enable a natural generalization of the identified determinants to the similar context of Polish towns, the more important that the research on medium cities is much rarer than studies on metropolises. This contribution belongs to the research streams of city governance and databased services, which are closely connected to and dependent on industrial digital transformation. Moreover, smart mobility addresses the objective of environmental protection, one of the crucial targets of NIP. Godlewska-Dzioboń (2020) performs international comparisons between Central and Eastern European Countries in 2020–2018. Particularly, she focuses on the sectoral transformation of the employment structure in these countries. Besides the important observations of spatial dynamics in sectoral structures, the chapter points to the increased importance of services relative to manufacturing in contemporary structural transformations. Thus, it justifies the expanded scope of New Industrial Policy that encompasses not only industry, recently refreshed with 4.0 Revolution, but also services, particularly the digital ones. The chapter by Czech (2020) identifies the impact of global debt on the national amounts outstanding of credit default swap contracts (CDS) in nonfinancial institutions. She finds the dynamics of the CDS notional amounts outstanding in response to global household indebtedness and total non-financial sector indebtedness in domestic banks. This contribution brings valuable practical insights about the core and dynamics of CDS and their usefulness in alleviating risks in international exchange. We find this input particularly relevant for industries and enterprises operating in global value chains. Widera (2020) performs a spatial analysis of the induced population potential of the communes in the Opolska region in 2000 and 2018. The econometric analysis revealed both the own potential of the communes and the interactions with neighboring communes to develop this potential. These findings are important to theorize about the bottom-level sources of territorial units’ potential, both internal and those stemming from spatial interactions. We find these conclusions relevant to understand local-level origins of regional transformations, as well as interdependencies among local territorial units. The next two parts of this volume present micro-level and bottomup contexts for industrial policy. Particularly, these are the insights from management and business research and from the research on governing various stakeholder interests and networks. In the second part, based on management and business theory and empirical evidence, the authors discuss human resource and technological challenges faced by the contemporary industry. Potoczek (2020) performs a bibliometric research to recognize the advancement of the process approach in organizations. She finds the research on process improvement as emerging. The major research community in that area belongs to the IT field, while management researchers are still a minor group. The author recommends the increased interest from the management field as conducive to the 4.0 transformation of organizational processes. These results provide policy-relevant input to the understanding of how academic research tackles digital transformation in organizational processes. The chapter by Igielski (2020) uses a survey among a sample of large enterprise senior managers headquartered in Poland to check whether and how they develop employee skills for the challenges of Industry 4.0. The results are pessimistic since they reveal the lack of adaptive and developmental actions in this regard. Nevertheless, there is also a positive sign, namely the awareness of the challenges posed by the 4.0 revolution. Thus, the chapter is valuable for the recommendations as to competence development in industrial transition to the digital economy. Flak (2020) presents an interesting test for the system of organizational terms as to its usefulness in the practice of motivating people and in a dedicated software. Based on a research experiment in real-life business settings, the author proves the applicability of theory-driven organizational terms in software applications supporting managers in their motivating functions. The chapter contributes important observations as to the interrelations among managerial and technological resources in motivating employees. Sztorc (2020) investigates lean management tools at hotels in Poland, based on a large sample of hotel representatives. The results are helpful in understanding the types of lean management tools, as well as their major targets in the researched organizations. The input of the study rests in filling the research gap as to the particular tools of lean management applied in the hotel industry to improve services and processes. The focus of this chapter on a particular industry provides a relevant basis for further application and upgrading of this service sector. The chapter by Mazurkiewicz (2020) offers an assessment of the impact of national culture on career orientation and career values among Polish and Chinese students of economics. Surprisingly, the value system does not differ much between the two national samples, despite the distinct characteristics of the two national cultures, according to Hofstede’s method. Consequently, the author assumes national culture as moderator of career values rather than their determinant. These results provide a contribution to the understanding of job motivations among future corporate employees, a critical determinant of all industrial transitions. Kowalik (2020) investigates the economic benefits perceived by student participants of scientific projects. Based on the survey, the author reveals students’ recognition of scientific projects as bringing economic effects. The study offers practical implications for young people engaging in research activities, as well as for research policy that might acknowledge additional important outcomes, besides purely scientific objectives. The third part discusses how governing networks and interests can ensure sustainable and socially responsible industries and enterprises. Sectoral and industrial collaborations are supposed to enhance industrial convergence (EOCIC, 2019). In this vein, Lis (2020) focuses on collaborative attitudes in clusters and technological parks. Cluster organizations are established to rip the localization and agglomeration economies, as well as synergies from cooperative links. Despite some history of operations, the surveyed Polish cluster initiatives and technology parks still reveal low development of enterprise cooperation. The author suggests self-evaluation of management and participants of the researched organizations to understand the accomplished level of collaboration and derive practical implications. This contribution is important to understand the performance of some organizational measures of industrial policy and their real input to industrial transformation. The chapter by Kowalczyk (2020) investigates sociocultural conditions of CSR-practices in the construction industry of selected European countries. Based on a survey with a large convenience sample, the author confirms the strength of stakeholder pressure on CSR practice as well as the mediating role of company culture in this relationship. At the same time, country differences were indicated as significant for CSR practice and worth further explanation of its variance. This study is valuable for the explanation of interests and stakeholder pressure affecting a particular industry, thus determining the development conditions of that industry. Another industry-specific study has been proposed by Kurzak-Mabrouk (2020), who focuses on food businesses. This chapter addresses the critical strategic direction of NIP that refers to sustainable and responsible growth with regard to environmental protection. The author performed the interviews with top and middle managers of a large representative sample of Polish food companies. The findings are optimistic, since the majority of companies undertake the efforts towards comprehensive sustainable development strategies voluntarily, and not only due to legal enforcement. Still, the researched enterprises do not fully apply these strategies as yet. Resonating with the study by Lis (2020), Flieger (2020) identifies network types according to the collaboration maturity level in a local government unit. The research on collaborative networks in public organizations still remains unique. Therefore, this study fills the research gap. The author uses a casebased approach to identify the network features that change according to the maturity level of relationships. The findings are useful for the practice of developing collaboration in local governments and contribute to our understanding of the context for industrial development.

The structure of the work – as indicated earlier – is based on solving the research problem posed. It results from the adopted goals and formulated research hypotheses. The need to analyse the above issues related to the research area was included in the structure of the thesis, divided into four chapters. The first chapter is devoted to the issues of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. It presents key definitions and classifications based on the existing legal framework in Poland. A statistical review of SMEs was conducted and the role of this sector of enterprises in the national economy was shown. Moreover, the European Union's policy towards micro, small and mediumsized enterprises was also reviewed and the main determinants of their development were presented in the light of the quoted research. The second chapter concerns the issue of business environment institutions. It reviews the most important concepts, presents the division of business environment institutions by form of support; analyses the organizational and legal aspects related to the functioning of BEI, also the spatial distribution of the discussed institutions indicating what role they play and the directions of their further development. The third chapter analyses the activities of business environment institutions in the area of financial support for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. The analysis included the activities of loan funds, guarantee funds, business angel networks and private equity/venture capital funds on the Polish market. The fourth chapter of the paper concerns the analysis of the functioning of business environment institutions in the field of financing support on the basis of research conducted among micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Poland. It presents the methodology of the research, characterizes the research sample and analyses the results obtained. The results of the study were also the final conclusions along with the evaluation of the functioning of financial BEIs and the author's recommendations for future activities for the analysed institutions. The literature in the form of scientific monographs and articles in peerreviewed scientific journals was used to write the study. In addition, legal acts, reports and analyses, internet sources and the author's own research and analysis were also used.