Purpose – The study aimed to test the validity and reliability of the Polish version of the identity leadership inventory (ILI) proposed by Steffens, Haslam, Reicher et al. (2014) and to confirm the relationship between identity leadership and various job-related outcomes (i.e., trust in leaders, job satisfaction, work engagement and turnover intentions) among employees from Poland-based organizations. Identity leadership appears to be a universal construct (van Dick, Ciampa, & Liang, 2018) but no one has studied it in Poland so far.
Design/methodology/approach – The sample consisted of 1078 employees collected in two independent subsamples from different organizations located in Northern and Central Poland. We evaluated the ILI’s factorial structure using confirmatory factor analysis.
Findings – The results confirm that the 15-item Polish version of the ILI has a four-dimensional structure with factors representing prototypicality, advancement, entrepreneurship and impresarioship. It showed satisfactory reliability. The identity leadership inventory-short form (four items) also showed a good fit with the data. As expected, the relationships between identity leadership and important work-related outcomes (general level of job satisfaction, work engagement, trust toward the leader and turnover intentions) were also significant.
Originality/value – Despite the cultural specifics of Polish organizations, the research results were generally very similar to those in other countries, confirming the universality of the ILI as shown in the Global Identity Leadership Development project (GILD, see van Dick, Ciampa, & Liang, 2018; van Dick et al., 2021).

Purpose – The article aims to identify and classify competencies and values considered essential or even necessary in the daily work of active managers and leaders.
Design/methodology/approach – This article is based on the results of comprehensive ethnographic research. I acquired the research material through open interviews (26 items), which facilitated immersion into the social reality of individual groups of respondents.
Findings – A manager who consistently adheres to their values builds lasting authority. A manager who is guided by values also has a greater influence on decision-making and team relationships. A manager who adheres to values can contribute to improving organizational culture and thus increase employee engagement and achieve better organizational results.
Research limitations/implications – Findings from qualitative studies are context-specific and may not be easily generalizable to other settings or populations.
Practical implications – Organizations need to recognize the centrality of values in building managerial authority. By strategically aligning values, promoting consistency and fostering a culture of trust, organizations can enhance managerial effectiveness, team relationships and overall organizational performance.
Social implications – Managers’ values play a crucial role in shaping workplace dynamics and can extend their influence to broader societal contexts. A values-driven approach has the potential to create positive social impacts and thus contribute to ethical business practices, trustful relationships and overall societal well-being. Originality/value – The findings are original and valuable because they holistically explore the connection between managerial values and authority and identify key factors that contribute to lasting and impactful leadership in organizations and society.

Purpose – We aimed to identify factors that influence student engagement in distance learning.
Design/methodology/approach – The research involved a group of 671 students from economic and technical higher education institutions in Poland. We collected the data with the CAWI technique and an original survey. Next, we processed the data using principal component analysis and then used the extracted components as predictors in the induced smoothing LASSO regression model.
Findings – The components of the students’ attitude toward remote classes learning conditions are: satisfaction with teachers’ approach, attitude to distance learning, the system of students’ values and motivation, IT infrastructure of the university, building a network of contacts and communication skills. The final model consisted of seven statistically significant variables, encompassing the student’s sex, level of studies and the first five extracted PCs. Student’s system of values and motivation as well as attitude toward distance learning, were those variables that had the biggest influence on student engagement.
Practical implications – The research result suggests that in addition to students’ system of values and motivation and their attitude toward distance learning, the satisfaction level of teachers’ attitude is one of the three most important factors that influence student engagement during the distance learning process. Originality/value – The main value of this article is the statistical model of student engagement during distance learning. The article fills the research gap in identifying and evaluating the impact of various factors determining student engagement in the distance learning process.

Purpose – The main goal of the article is to determine the mediating role of human resources management (HRM) outcomes in the relationships between shaping employee work engagement and job satisfaction (SEWE&JS) and company performance results and to establish whether there are any identifiable regularities in this scope in the pre-pandemic and pandemic period in the headquarters (HQs) and foreign subsidiaries of multinational companies (MNCs).
Design/methodology/approach – The empirical research included 200 MNCs headquartered in Central Europe. The raw data in the variables were adjusted with the efficiency index (EI) to capture the actual relations between the variables under study. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to verify the research hypotheses and assess the mediating effects.
Findings – The research findings show that the HRM outcomes positively mediate the relationships between SEWE&JS and the company performance results. HRM outcomes turned out to be a stronger mediator between SEWE&JS and company performance results in finance and quality in the HQs during the pandemic. By contrast, in the local subsidiaries, they were a stronger mediator of the relationships between the results in innovativeness and quality during the pandemic.
Originality/value – In addition to confirming the results of some other researchers, the research findings also provide new knowledge. They determine the mediating role of HRM outcomes in the relationship between SEWE&JS and the three categories of company performance results, namely finance, innovativeness and quality. In addition, they identify certain regularities in the four studied contexts, which is a novelty in this type of research. A novelty is also the use of employee key performance indicators (KPIs) in the data analysis as the efficiency index in analyzing the effect of the variables under study. The value of the research is also the fact that it covers HRM in MNCs established in Central Europe, which, compared to MNCs from the Western world, is not a frequent subject of research

Purpose – Recently, both researchers and practitioners have been very interested in the impact of leadership on employee engagement. Thus, I aimed to examine the relationship between spiritual leadership and work engagement through the mediating role of spiritual well-being at work.
Design/methodology/approach – I assessed spiritual leadership, engagement, and well-being in an empirical study based on a sample of 223 employees. I collected data through a survey-based method and analyzed them using structural equation modeling (SEM).
Findings – The present study contributes to the existing knowledge in the leadership field, especially spiritual leadership. The results revealed that spiritual leadership impacts employees’ work engagement by indirectly influencing employees’ spiritual well-being.
Research limitations/implications – Theoretically, the findings imply that spiritual well-being can be one of the factors considered in enhancing work engagement through spiritual leadership.
Practical implications – Finding evidence that spiritual leadership, like other leadership styles, can foster employee engagement. Therefore, leaders should take care of employees’ spiritual needs.
Originality/value – Many researchers have indicated that well-being is associated with employee engagement. However, they overlooked employees’ spiritual well-being in the research. The study confirmed the unexplored mediating role of spiritual well-being between spiritual leadership and employee engagement.

Purpose: Assuming a duopoly industry with pollution producing processes, the aim of this work
is to study the firms’ choice to engage in Environmental Corporate Social Responsibility (ECSR)
by means of “green” managerial delegation, i.e. hiring managers with preferences for environ mental
concerns to whom owners delegate both sales and decisions to adopt green technology.

Methodology: Depending on the firms’ strategic choices, a two/three-stage game takes place solved
by the backward induction method to obtain sub-game perfect Nash equilibria.

Results: When the market structure is a Cournot duopoly, and the environmental sensitivity of
“green” managers is extremely low, then the engagement in ECSR is the firms’ dominant strategy,
regardless of the efficiency level of the available abatement technology. Nonetheless, firms are cast
into a prisoner’s dilemma. On the other hand, if “green” managers have low-intermediate to intermediate
environmental sensitivity, then either no ECSR, multiple symmetric equilibria, or ECSR
engagement can emerge as a result in equilibrium. Finally, if managers’ environmental sensitivity
is adequately high, then firms do not engage in ECSR. When a market entry game is considered
with the Stackelberg competition in which the incumbent adopts ECSR while the entrant does not,
socially responsible behaviors cause the market to be more contestable. However, the incumbent’s
owners can use ECSR to secure a dominant position in the market, provided that they hire “green”
managers with adequate environmental concerns.
Implications: In the case of entry, non-trivial policy implications arise. Due to increased competition,
the welfare of consumers improves (lower prices for the goods). However, the entry of a polluting
firm increases emissions. Higher emissions damage consumers and lower the overall social welfare
of an environmentally concerned government. Thus, a complete welfare analysis is required prior
to the design of a government’s regulatory intervention.

Originality/Value: This paper is the first that introduces the figure of the “green” manager who
shows, in its utility function, an environmental concern.

Purpose: Developing a strong, favourable employer brand of a retail chain may be regarded as an important means of creating a competitive advantage. Retail chains should attract personnel with desired competence required for their particular purposes. The retail sector in Poland is perceived as a strongly disliked employer. Thus employer branding can be an important element of strategies adopted by retail chains operating in Poland. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the development of employer branding strategies implemented by selected global retailers operating in Poland and the impact of such strategies on their respective competitive positions in the Polish market. The time frame for the analysis is the period of 2009–2014.

Research design and methods: In addition to a review of the literature on the development of employer brands, this paper includes a case study of a few global retail chains operating in Poland. The paper is based on the assumption that retail chains pursue competitive advantage by developing employer brand strategies.

Implications and recommendations: A continued engagement in strategic activities in the feld of employer branding is very important for retail chains. Decision makers need to pay special attention to the promotion of their retail chains as a good workplace, using employer branding techniques

Purpose: The goal of this paper is to develop a framework describing the mechanisms which explain how and when CSR engagement affects company’s bottom line, based on a review of the business case for CSR literature.

Approach: This article is conceptual and based on literature review. By using a CSR stage development model, behavioral and stakeholder perspectives, it offers a descriptive multi­dimensional integrative framework of the business case for CSR.

Findings: The fndings show that the relationship between engagement in CSR activities and corporate performance (CP) depends on a CSR development stage, managerial interpretation of CSR issues, stakeholder management model and moderating factors.

Originality: This article integrates disconnected models and conceptualizations in the subject literature and contributes to the theoretical discussion by arguing that type and scale of benefts from CSR activity progress along the stages of organizational CSR development. Moreover, it also shows that the CSR­CP relationship depends on internal and external factors (mediators and moderators). It therefore supports the contingency argument.