Editorial

Welcome to the first issue of the International Journal of Management and Economics in 2024. In this issue, we present six papers written by authors representing various Polish and foreign universities and institutions.

The first paper by Jaroslaw Korpysa and Judit Olah aims to examine the resilience of organizational startups during the post-COVID-19 pandemic. In this respect, the first part of the paper presents literature considerations on organizational resilience of startups in the coronavirus pandemic. The second part of the paper contains the results of the authors’ own research. The following hypothesis was verified: thanks to organizational resilience, the startups eliminate negative effects of coronavirus pandemic. The group of surveyed companies consisted of startups operating in Zachodniopomorskie, Wielkopolskie, and Lubuskie voivodeships. The research has shown that owing to their organizational resilience, the startups were able to adapt to the changes in the market. Thus, on the one hand, they were able to quickly tailor their offer to the current needs of customers; and on the other hand, they could modify the processes taking place inside the company. As a result of these measures, the startups increased their revenues, which may directly determine the future competitiveness of the surveyed companies.

The second paper was written by Dorota Niedziόłka. The paper shows in which areas technological changes will take place to bring about energy security and the prerequisites and costs. It has been assumed that technological progress will contribute to the development of energy markets and increase the level of energy security. The opportunities for change will be the need for new energy sources, instability in the energy markets, and technological progress. New technological solutions allow for better energy demand and supply management, preparing forecasts for increases/decreases in energy demand. The threats are high costs of introducing new technologies and the necessity of implementing many investments at the same time, which require changes in entire systems. Investments require a long period of time and anticipation of trends.

In the third paper, Aleksandra Szarek-Piaskowska, Mariusz-Jan Radło, Ewelina Szczech-Pietkiewicz, and Mariusz Sagan identify and evaluate the key trends in the leasing sector in Poland from the perspective of both the present situation and the coming years. The literature review and the conducted in-depth interviews enabled the authors to determine the following list of contemporary trends that are relevant to the leasing sector: the circular economy, the sharing economy and product-as-a-service, incidental and shock-related changes, digitalization, automation and robotization, and the development of the electric vehicle segment. Furthermore, many of these phenomena fit into the broader concept of so-called sustainable finance. All of the indicated trends were deemed as relevant by the experts. The leasing sector has not yet reached the maximum of its potential for market expansion in Poland.

The fourth paper by Krystian Jaworski and Jakub Borowski seeks to assess the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the EUR/PLN exchange rate. The authors use the Twitter application programming interface (API) to construct a novel indicator capturing the varying perception of geopolitical risk related to the war in Ukraine, showing that the VIX index, government bond yield spread, credit default swap, and the novel Twitter variable are statistically significant determinants of the EUR/PLN exchange rate following the invasion. It turns out that the war in Ukraine was responsible for an increase in the EUR/PLN exchange rate of about 5.0% in the first 2 weeks following its breakout, and that the weakening of PLN in the aftermath of the war contributed to an increase of headline inflation in Poland by about 0.33 percentage points.

The fifth paper was prepared by Grzegorz Maciejewski, Pavol Kita, Marta Žambochová, and František Križan. This paper aims to explore how geomarketing becomes a key element in managing the business model of an established retailer in the food market. The survey sample comprised 244 stores, whose managers were questioned using a semi-structured interview. Cluster analysis was used to assess 40 statements from the managers about the business models of the current store. The paper contributes to the identification of clusters of stores based on their size and location. The paper also contributes to the discussion about the market within geomarketing research in terms of theory and practice at a time when the population’s income is expected to decrease due to several crises.

In the sixth paper, Marian Moszoro evaluates the direct employment effect of the public investment in key infrastructure: electricity, roads, schools and hospitals, and water and sanitation. Using rich firm-level panel data from 41 countries over 19 years, the author estimates that US$1 million of public spending on infrastructure create 3–7 jobs in advanced economies, 10–17 jobs in emerging market economies, and 16–30 jobs in low-income developing countries. As a comparison, US$1 million of public spending on R&D yields 5–11 jobs in R&D in OECD countries. Green investment and investment with a larger R&D component deliver a higher employment effect.

I hope that all papers included in the current issue of the IJME will be a good reading and a source of inspiration for our readers.