Zmiany strukturalne przemysłu Polski w warunkach kryzysu gospodarczego
The global economic crisis which started in 2007 in the United States of America, at different times and to a different extent affected various sectors and national economies of the world. In Poland, its symptoms were noticeable later than in other countries. In the first phase of the crisis (2007- 2008), there was no direct effect, due to the fact that initially the turmoil on global financial markets had weaker effect on the national economy, and it was limited mainly to capital markets, affecting the sectors of agriculture, industry, and services to a lesser extent. However, as recession grew in force, the crisis gradually began to affect also the results of economic activity, including industry. In 2009, a significant decrease in the value of production sold, as compared to the previous year, was observed. The question is whether this had been reflected in changes of spatial industrial structure. The five-year period of the economic recession seems to be long enough to assess such changes. Therefore, the paper analyses the transformation of the spatial structure of Polish industry during crisis, based on the basic indicators of potential, such as employment and the value of production sold, as well as concentration coefficients. The year 2007 was adopted as the base year, treating it as a pre-crisis year. The conclusions of the detailed analysis indicated that the impact of crisis on the change of the spatial structure of the Polish industry is very limited and the observed trends of change did not differ substantially from the general industrial development trends in Poland, identified by previous studies. It should be noted, however, that the structure of industry is characterized by high “inertia” due to the complexity and size of the investment process. Therefore, in the following several years no deep and sudden transformation should be expected, even during economic recession.
The Impact of International Determinants on the Development of Industrial Enterprises
The paper presents the problem of the impact of international determinants on the functioning of industrial enterprises. The author defines the functions of industrial enterprises in the geographical space (basic, complementary, standard, regional, local) and presents the main international and domestic deter-minants of companies development (including markets, global economic and political situation, ownership structure, economic policy) and types of companies relationships with the international environment (prod-uct, raw materials, capital, financial, technological, information, employment). The consideration was treated as current directions of research in the field of industrial geography.
Uwarunkowania rozwoju usług opartych na wiedzy, na przykładzie analizy działalności gabinetów stomatologicznych w Polsce
In the article the authors analyzed the determinants of dental services’ development inPoland, as an example of knowledge-based services. For this purpose, they conducted tests and analyses,whose results are presented in the article. They proved “knowledge base” of dental professionby means of the analysis of dentists’ financial and time investment. They presented the results of theirsurvey conducted on a group of 60 dentists, preceded by an interview with the owners of dental surgeries.They examined the situation of dentists in the labor market in comparison to other examples of“knowledge-based professions,” which showed that the unemployment does not affect this profession.It cannot be said about other knowledge-based professions. The analysis of training offers for peoplewho want to start their own business provided some information about the scope of technical assistancein setting up and running their own business which can be obtained from PARP, NIL and private training companies. The authors carried out an analysis of the costs of starting dental practice. As a result ofresearch and interviews, the authors were able to identify the factors which determine the functioningof dental services market in Poland. It turned out that the main barriers to the development of theseservices is surprisingly: the lack of knowledge about setting up a business, and in the second place, thelack of funds to start it.