Volumen 9 (2017): Edición 4 (December 2017)

Objective: To propose a model for the creation of selected language practice games that will allow for multilingual families to engage in common activities in order to retain the multiculturalism factor amongst parents and their children.

Methodology: Ontological considerations based on sociolinguistic models in accordance with TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) and SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) Models.

Findings: The preservation of this heritage among both children and adults can be achieved by allowing them to engage in various activities, allowing them to acquire multiple languages simultaneously and thus create a sense of national identity.

Value Added: The presented methodological considerations are to be used as the basis for the creation of output results in an Erasmus+ financed project carried out at the University of Social Sciences (along with other European partners) entitled Multilingual Families Clubs: Promoting Linguistic and Cultural Heritage of Europe.

Recommendations: activities for Polish multilingual speakers need to include those in the following languages: German, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian.

Objective: The purpose of the article is to study current trends in the field of language policy.

Methodology: Analysis of normative documents concerning the teaching of foreign languages in the European Union

Findings: The main trends of language policy are life-long learning, students’ mobility, multilingualism, using English as lingua franca, the use of information and communication technologies for the formation of foreign language competence.

Value Added: Analysis of the current trends in the development of foreign language competence in higher education.

Recommendations: The study of world trends in the training of specialists in general and language policy in particular.

Objective: The article defines features of formation and development of corporate universities in the USA and Canada.

Methodology: The article analyzes the dependence of successful functioning of the corporate universities on the choice of adequate training technologies; explores the essence and potentials of project-based learning as action learning which is focused on personnel development, business development and effective management of changes.

Findings: There is a close relationship between the performance of the functions of the corporate university and the forms, methods, learning technologies that are used in the learning process. Project-based learning is widely used in corporate universities in the United States and Canada; it provides an opportunity to gain managerial experience in real time, solves an important task of personnel development – formation of the ability to learn.

Value Added: The results of the research give ground to conclude that the corporate university in the US and Canada is a structural unit of a company, which performs certain functions that promote business efficiency.

Recommendations: The project topic should be related to current or future changes in the company. The solution of the problem should include diagnosing of the problem, analysis, recommendations, implementation phase, as also cooperation with members of the company.

Objective: The aim of the paper is to explore existing and emerging opportunities for academic mobility and ESL teachers’ professional development, to present the review of theoretical assumptions about intercultural competence, to provide recommendations on using effective strategies at group and individual levels to increase the effectiveness of ESL teachers training in general and intercultural competence formation in particular.

Methodology: This paper explores existing and emerging opportunities for academic mobility and ESL teachers’ professional development, presents the review of theoretical assumptions about intercultural competence.

Findings: Effective strategies of intercultural competence formation at group and the individual level were examined.

Value Added: The use of theoretical and practical conclusions of this paper would enhance the effectiveness of ESL teachers’ training in general and intercultural competence formation in particular.

Recommendations: This paper provides recommendations on using effective strategies to achieve successful intercultural communication at group and individual levels.

Objective: Tourist regions are characterized by a very high complexity and micro-enterprises are the largest group of entities which determine the competitiveness of the destination. However, management of such businesses has a strong specificity. The goal of this paper is to identify the capabilities of managing competitiveness and marketing of this group of entities.

Methodology: Literature review, examining and discussing the current knowledge regarding the competitiveness of family tourist micro-enterprises.

Findings: On the one hand, small companies have significant limitations compared to larger companies. However, the family nature of the company allows for high flexibility of management. Decisions can usually be made faster and easier, which means that they are able to adapt their offer to the expectations of customers faster and better than large entities. Also, an atmosphere of hospitality and friendship can be easily created. What is more, cooperation with other local entities should result in the ability to offer higher value to consumers.

Value Added: Authors, on the bases of literature review have proposed a model that shows relations as an element of building competitiveness of a family tourist micro-enterprises. It appears that these firms have unique opportunities to develop relationships with their customers. Cooperation, quality and communication have been described as key variables responsible for this process, that should result in generating the benefits of re-selecting the services of the company as well as giving them positive recommendations.

Recommendations: In the area of family businesses in tourism, there is still lack of empirical studies. That is why, the issues presented in this work should be subjected to empirical verification. Future research should concentrate on the specificity of managing a tourist family micro-enterprise and on possible sources of competitive advantage of a tourist family micro-enterprise in the eyes of customers. Especially, described model should be empirically verified.

Objective: The article deals with the question of educational leadership and the understanding of that notion. That problem is relevant in the discussions on contemporary education, which is demonstrated by numerous publications concerning such areas as pedagogy, sociology of education or management. The attributes ascribed to an educational leader (personality traits, attitudes, values, etc.) are varied and arise from different experience of the authors and the applied research perspectives. The article presents the results of studies describing the characteristics of an ideal educational leader.

Methodology: The aim of the presented studies was to attempt to identify the set of traits ascribed to a contemporary educational leader and determine to what extent the respondents identify those traits as the ones they themselves possess. The studies have been based on the opinions and experience of the participants in the education system in Poland – graduates of senior secondary schools (2017). As the analysis of relevant literature on the subject does not allow one to present a uniform set of qualities of an ideal educational leader, the authors of the presented studies have selected 34 traits that are most frequently mentioned in scientific papers. Subsequently, during the first stage of the studies, a group of 22 experts was asked to select 17 descriptive categories (half of the presented set) that, in their view, most accurately describe an ideal educational leader. Afterwards, a sample of 108 respondents (graduates) was provided with a survey questionnaire where, using a five-point Likert scale, the participants evaluated the occurrence of a given trait/quality in the following contexts: A pedagogue – an ideal leader; A pedagogue – a leader from the past; Self-assessment with respect to a degree of possession of the listed qualities. The studies were conducted in Google Forms technology with the randomisation of all the studied qualities of a leader for each of the questions and each of the respondents. The constructed non-random purposive sample consisted of the graduates of general education, technical and vocational senior secondary schools from cities with population exceeding 500,000 inhabitants. Men constituted 27.8% of the sample.

Findings: According to the respondents, the key traits in this case (a pedagogue – an ideal leader) included the ability to motivate others, psychological and pedagogical sensitivity and being a moral authority. The results relating to the educational leader from the past show a slightly different order of the key qualities resulting from the respondents’ own experience. The first place was taken by high intellectual capabilities. It was followed by the ability to motivate others and being a moral authority. When conducting self-assessment with respect to the listed leadership qualities, the participants indicated that the qualities they possessed to the greatest degree included psychological and pedagogical sensitivity, the ability to interpret other people’s expectations and the ability to plan the necessary changes. The achieved results also show that the averaged ( ) self-assessment regarding the degree of possession of all the leadership qualities in comparison to the qualities ascribed to an ideal leader is lower by 21.97%. At the stage of designing the studies, it may have been expected that more significant differences would be revealed between the imagined ideal type of a leader and the self-assessment of the graduates with respect to leadership predisposition/qualities.

Value Added: In summary, the applied quantitative method of measurement allows one to confirm the accuracy of the set of leadership qualities determined on the basis of the relevant literature on the subject. According to the opinions of the graduates taking part in the study (former participants of leadership relationships), it correctly describes an educational leader. That knowledge may have practical application, especially in the conscious building of leadership in the educational environment. This is because it may be assumed that the stronger the correspondence of the set of qualities of an educational leader with the expectations of the followers, the better the chance for the creation of an effective leadership relationship.

Recommendations: The perspective of the “followers” who have their own individual experience with respect to relationships with “educational leaders” seems to be worth exploring further. The analysis of available publications on the subject in question gives grounds for posing a question to what extent the postulated image of the educational leader has any empirical foundations and to what degree it is rather a speculation or intuition of numerous authors.

Objective: Since more diverse audiences attend universities, nowadays, more advanced educational approaches are required. The current study explores the role of culture of learning transformations in facing this challenge. We employ the notion of ‘cultures of learning’ to draw attention to the socio-cultural, sustainable and competence-oriented aspects of key educational practices. We are focusing on advances in students’ learning-culture, which are implemented at the university: interdisciplinary, transformative sustainability learning and experiential learning.

Methodology: The paper considers practical issues related to the educational approaches, their benefits and limitations.

Findings: The results of the observations indicated that students’ learning culture was highly affected by educational approaches.

Value Added: We highlight that mutual relations exist between learning-culture and teaching-culture and exactly the student-teacher dialogue should be changed to transform traditional learning in higher education.

Recommendations: Interdisciplinarity and creativity can serve as the key factors in establishing a productive educational cycle that fosters a learning-culture based on students’ needs and values consideration.

Objective: Analyze of the characteristics and competitive strategies, dimension and structure that allowed Casa Ley to become a family economic group

Methodology: The methods used: critical historical, analytical and descriptive. The following approaches were used: 1) regional, 2) historical and 3) corporate strategies and organizations. The regional approach considers that regional origin is an important factor in the economic and political practices of Mexican entrepreneurs. The second gives more weight to the historical origin and the conditions of emergence to establish the final configuration, the prevailing economic and political practices and the patterns of development of the groups. The third approach addresses the changing organizational structure of large modern corporations and their tendency to adopt more complex management structures and corporate morphologies

Findings: The main result is the marketing strategies implemented by Casa Ley, such as: introduction of services that add value to the company, creation and diversification of formats, brand creation, centralization of distribution systems and consumption incentives, consolidate the oligopoly structure of the trade sector. The comparative method is established to consider those situations in which the common characteristics of companies are combined in historical circumstances that precede the formation of large companies or groups in Mexico.

Value Added: It identifies the commercial strategies that have allowed the Mexican company of the retail sector in Mexico to become a consolidated family economic group.

Recommendations: The Casa Ley family economic group has been consolidated using successful commercial strategies, limiting its development by not using financial resources that are available in the stock market. Considering the above, it is advisable to use this source of financing available for the business sector.

Objective: the present paper aims to explore the main motives behind Cairo bank’s attempts to raise its senior bankers’ level of organizational resilience.

Methodology: after gathering and investigating all relevant literature about organizational resilience, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 of the senior bankers who work at Cairo bank at 6 October city, Giza, Egypt. All interviews were conducted in the Arabic language.

Findings: the findings of this study show that senior bankers at Cairo bank, like many other Egyptian classes, struggle in a state of uncertainty and consider it the main motive behind their bank’s attempt to raise their resilience level. The pressure of stakeholders is, to a large extent, present, and there is a thought that fulfilling different societal obligations is a source for economic gains and accordingly, stakeholders’ pressure is a second motive behind raising employees’ organizational resilience. Furthermore, organizational culture adaptability and the tendency to responsively act in line with unpredicted events is a third motive. Finally, senior bankers’ loud voice in calling for continuous grants for education and training has come to be the fourth motive.

Value added: the paper is considered the first to qualitatively investigate organizational resilience in Egypt.

Recommendations: The researchers are of the view that the development of every departmental agenda for needed resilience is a priority for improving organizational capacity. Moreover, reformulating the bank’s values, operations and activities should also be considered to create a harmony between the external threats and the internal duties. Furthermore, there should be also an orientation to redefine the concept of “uncertainty” from time to time to include socio-political and socio-economic types of risk.

Objective: The aim of the research was to construct a theoretical model of competences of managers employed in health care institutions in the Warmińsko-Mazurskie Voivodeship.

Methodology: The theoretical list of competences was based on the literature of the subject and the results developed during the workshop session with postgraduate students in the scope of management of healthcare entities. All respondents (266 persons) were health care workers and held managerial positions at various levels of organizations.

Findings: On the basis of the obtained results it can be stated that in the key competency model of the efficient manager dominates professional competence in the field of organization and management. These competences were also diagnosed with the greatest deficiencies that hinder effective work.

Value Added: Results of the research enable the introduction of appropriate curricular content into the educational model of potential healthcare managers, hence improving management quality of medical organizations.