Volume 54 (2018): Issue 2 (June 2018)

The core objective of this paper is to determine the main political and economic conditions and challenges related to the possible evolution of the integration process in the euro area toward fiscal federalism and fiscal union as a way to increase the capacity of the area to cope with future economic and financial crises. The issue of a separate budget for this area is of particular interest in this article. The idea of such a budget has recently become the subject of lively public debate in the European Union and has been a factor in encouraging the European Commission to propose new solutions at the end of 2017 in the field of economic governance of the euro area, including the establishment of a European Monetary Fund. The analysis carried out in this article leads to the conclusion that under the current conditions, there is little chance of introducing such regulatory and institutional changes that would significantly increase the scale of financial transfers between the euro area member states.

The decision of the United Kingdom (UK) to leave the European Union (EU) is unprecedented, especially considering the recent trend in the global economy toward economic integration. There is a multitude of research concerning the implications of economic integration; however, research in the field of disintegration is scarce. Brexit serves as an interesting case study to investigate the effects of economic disintegration. The implications for trade are especially fascinating as trade liberalization is one of the most important benefits of economic integration. Existing studies focus mainly on Brexit’s impact on the UK’s exports and imports, while less attention has been paid to Brexit’s effects on the trade of other countries. The main objective of our research is to estimate Brexit’s influence on Polish exports. We present several possible scenarios of future trade relations between the UK and the EU and assume that, at least in the nearest-future post-Brexit scenario, trade under the World Trade Organization rules is most likely. This will result in the imposition of tariffs on trade between the UK and the EU members, including Poland. In our research, we used the real exchange rate of the Polish zloty against the British pound as a proxy for the changes in price competitiveness of Polish exports due to the imposition of tariffs. We find that in the first year after Brexit, the dynamics of Polish exports to the UK will decrease due to the imposition of customs duties by 1.3 percentage points (pp) and by 0.1 pp when it comes to total Polish exports. This paper contributes to the discussion on the effects of disintegration on trade. We propose a new method for assessing changes in trade volume due to increase of trade barriers.

In the European Union Member States, value-added tax (VAT) is undergoing a continuous process of harmonization, which was initiated in the 1960s by the introduction of the First and Second Council Directives and which resulted in the implementation of the common tax assessment base. Currently, the European Union VAT system faces multiple challenges related in particular to the negative side effects of certain design features and progressing globalization. The main aim of this article is to discuss some dilemmas of the common VAT model. Particular attention is placed on the fiscal consequences of VAT preferences, as well as on the origins, components, and implications of the VAT gap. For the purpose of this analysis, 2 neighboring countries were selected, namely, Germany and Poland. On the basis of the national and Eurostat data, the author calculates the most significant VAT performance indicators and reviews the factors decreasing VAT efficiency in these countries in comparison to other European Union Member States.

The article sets out to explore how conflicting institutional logics of support organizations influence their value creation. Value creation undertaken by support organizations does not directly reflect their missions. Even though one can generalize that all support organizations should adjust their offer according to the idea of helping companies (especially small- and medium-sized enterprises [SMEs]) in their development, support organizations very often struggle with the conflict between mission delivery and survival needs, which affects value proposition of services. Moreover, support organizations are also shaped by institutional logics, which, embedded in social systems, govern all social agents. Therefore, the study explains the challenge of value creation from the perspective of the conflict of competing institutional logics that govern support organizations. The study also has its academic impact by contributing to existing literature on value creation by support organizations through the use of institutional logic theory. To gain this knowledge, discourse analysis is utilized in the study.

Introduced in 2003, net promoter score (NPS) very quickly gained popularity, as a customer loyalty measure, among companies and a part of researchers, due to its simplicity, the ease of interpretation, low costs of calculation, and, overall, its assumed impact on future growth and profitability. In due course of literature review, it was identified that not all researchers endorsed NPS, rejecting its presumed impact on growth and its superiority over other loyalty measures. This study aims therefore to verify the influence of NPS on the growth and profitability of Polish transportation companies. This objective is achieved with the use of Spearman correlation ranks and linear regression. The findings of this study reject the proclaimed relationship between NPS and growth; hence, in that matter, the results are aligned to criticism presented in literature. The study, however, confirmed a positive and statistically significant relationship between NPS and profitability. Accordingly, the study recommends Polish transportation companies to include NPS in a portfolio of metrics, however, not as a stand-alone diagnostic tool.

Purpose – This study aimed to assess the impact of director-generals’ human and social capitals on the organizational performance of farmers’ cooperatives in Fujian Province. Design/Methodology/Approach – Questionnaire survey data of 303 standard cooperatives in nine cities of Fujian Province were statistically analyzed.

Findings – We identified that director-generals’ human and social capitals affect all four dimensions of cooperative performance, through the mediating role of management effectiveness.

Practical Implications – We offer suggestions and measures for improving cooperatives’ performance by enhancing the human and social capitals of director-generals. Based on China’s national conditions, we propose measures to improve director-generals’ human and social capitals by the Internal trust, Government policy support, and Business network (IGB) model, which emphasizes establishing a social network of cooperatives’ director-generals, accumulating social capital, and promoting cooperative development through internal members, government departments, and commercial organizations.