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: To analyse the issue of public debt in Poland and examine its effect on other areas of socio-economic life as well as government policy.
Approach: The question of public debt is placed in its historical context by looking at how it grew during the Communist system and influenced the transition period. The article draws on a range of secondary economic statistics and considers in detail a number of public policy issues, such as the reform of the pension system.

Findings: One result of the large debt incurred by the end of the 1970s was that Poland became indebted to creditors in the West. This dependency helped to shape its economic policy at the end of the 1980s. The transition to a market economy placed new burdens on the country’s public services, primarily due to the resulting large deactivation of labour. Furthermore, the creation of a compulsory private pension system at the end of the 1990s diverted significant funds out of the government’s budget and swelled the country’s public debt. Since the outbreak of the economic crisis, Poland has avoided a recession by increasing public investment by utilising available European Union funds. However, due to internal and external limits on the size of its public debt, the government is being pressured to reduce this spending. In order to create more fiscal room, the government has partly dismantled the compulsory private pension system as a short-term solution to the growing debt crisis.

Value: In the wake of the global financial crisis and economic turmoil in the European Union, the matter of public debt has taken on increased importance. This paper considers this question from a long-term perspective in a country that has been relatively successful during the international economic downturn. By examining public debt from this broad perspective, we can better understand the economic situation in Poland and the European Union, whilst also shedding light on some of the surrounding academic perspectives and public policy debates.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to show how the concentrations of primary income
can be related to the labour market structure in two samples of selected European
and transition countries. Then it focuses on the differences in the transitional path of
Poland and Russia that justify the current divergences in the distribution of income
in these two countries.

Methodology: This research, in its empirical part, is based on cluster analysis and
principal component analysis (PCA). By these techniques, the study defines which
main factors of the labour market are more involved in the distribution process in
the selected countries.

Findings: On the basis of the data used, it seems possible to establish a relationship
between different labour market models and the degree of primary income inequality,
focusing on which variables are more relevant with respect to the different
labour market systems.

Originality: This research deals with the aspect of the concentration of primary
income in different economies with cluster and principal component analyses, considering
the shortage of related economic data in this field of research.