Purpose: Self-employment is considered one of the responses to precarious employment, particularly among those who lost jobs during an economic crisis. Although starting a new business is widely available, operating new ventures remains challenging. This article aims to explore the premises of self-employment success, namely self-employment intention and proactive coping as crucial predictors of further performance.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors recruited participants among initially unemployed individuals who participated in the entrepreneurial program aimed at creating self-employment. Since entrepreneurs are expected to have specific personal characteristics important for performance, the authors assessed proactive coping as the key factor for self-employment intention.

Findings: The results depicted proactive coping as crucial in performing own ventures in the long run, which suggests that self-employment intention may change over time.

Practical implications: Proactive coping is particularly appropriate for self-employed at any stage of the entrepreneurial process because it maintains the intention to perform own business. Thus, the findings underline the need for proactive coping training for entrepreneurs, particularly those previously unemployed.

Originality/value: As the self-employment intention may differ in time, the importance of being proactive in operating small businesses increases.

Purpose: One of the regulatory responses to the 2008 financial crisis was to internalize the costs related to banks’ distress by introducing bank levies. More than 23 European banking sectors have been confronted with the new levy regime imposing the additional tax on banks’ balance sheet.

Methodology: This study analyzes the effect of the levy introduction on banks’ profitability, credit activity, and on their business models. More importantly, we confront two different levy regimes – one imposed on banks’ assets and the other on liabilities – to assess their differential impact. A generalized least squares regression with a random effect is performed on a data sample of Hungarian and German credit institutions from 2005 to 2015.

Results: The results show that levy introduction weakened banking sectors in terms of their profitability as well as their lending activity. Even though banks try to compensate for the cost of the levies by passing some of the costs on to the customers and restructuring their operations to limit the tax burden, we find that these activities are not sufficient to offset the whole tax burden. We also note that while the asset levy has a more severe effect on banks’ profits, the liability levy severely affects banks’ lending due to lower interest margin resulting from higher cost of funding.

Findings: Our research results provide important conclusions for regulators, especially during turbulent periods such as the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen the banking sectors by considering the levy suspension.

Purpose: The present study investigates the survival and success of new organizations in the light of complex network theory.

Methodology: The empirical data was collected using the survey method from the technology park companies are analyzed with social network analysis. Two main methods were used in this study: descriptive statistics and social network analysis.

Findings: The findings indicate that new nodes appearing because of splitting up of bigger nodes from present or other related networks have a higher degree of centrality. In practice, this means that companies founded by former members of large-scale companies from these networks are more successful due to the ease in providing the flow of resources and information through previous links. This suggests that the imprint effect can be observed in the appearance, lifecycle, and performance of new nodes in complex networks.

Originality: The literature lacks studies on new organizations’ lifecycle in complex networks despite the existence of studies about new organizations in organizational networks. This study examines the appearance, success, and survival of new organizations in networks by complex network approaches such as dynamism, dissipative structures, and uncertainties.

Purpose: Many empirical and review studies have been performed in the management and organization literature from the structural social capital perspective. Since these studies focus on different topics periodically, we aimed to make a bibliometric analysis of the structural social capital literature that allows a regular, systematic, and quantitative evaluation of published articles in management and organization science to identify the underlying structure in this research area and to identify the main research themes of the scholarship.

Methodology: The bibliographic matching technique was used for checking international databases to explore the main concepts and themes of the management and organization literature and to identify main themes in the research area. Therefore, this article offers a bibliometric analysis of the literature that allows for a regular, systematic, and quantitative evaluation of published articles to identify their underlying structure and to identify the main research themes in the scholarship. Research data were analyzed using the text mining method, which is a sub-branch of the data mining method and one of the most critical ways to analyze and process unstructured data.

Findings: Structural social capital studies were examined in management and organization science databases in three periods forming four years. Although there are no completely different emerging themes, we noticed periodic differences and change in priority rankings. Moreover, we found that the subjects repeat every period with few new concepts.

Implications: This research shows the main themes in the management and organization literature, where structural social capital elements are examined together, and covers all areas of management, organization and business science. Considering the main topics of the three periods of this research, there are similarities, namely the words that rank among the top in each period are “innovation,” “entrepreneurship,” “knowledge management,” “performance,” “leadership,” “technology,” and “human resources” and these themes are the most prominent.

Originality/Value: This research presents an overview of all past studies that focus on the structural social capital present in social interactions. Since structural social capital influences management and organization literature, it is considered a valuable study and a guide for future research.

Purpose: Despite the importance of innovation, the full innovation potential of companies operating in the industrial sector of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) seems not to have been unlocked yet. Thus, the primary purpose of the study was to explore the key elements of company innovation policies applied on the way to successful innovation.

Methodology: The article presents results of an empirical quantitative analysis. The data has been collected through an anonymous online and postal survey. The analysis focuses on 345 companies active on foreign markets and involves a Mann-Whitney U test and a regression analysis.

Findings: The conducted analysis points to the importance of the degree of interorganizational network embeddedness for the performance of companies active on foreign markets. It shows that the higher the degree of the overall network embeddedness (measured with adaptations, trust and mutuality), the higher the company’s perceived performance relative to its competitors.

Research limitations: The research was burdened with such limitations as respondents experiencing time pressure and the use of only one source of information (the interviewees).

Originality: Despite much general evidence, the study attempts to complement the rare qualitative studies on innovation in CEE. It was carried out as a response to the lack of an in-depth study covering such recurrent challenges in the feld of company innovation policies as disruption, portfolio balancing, integration, intangibilities’ management, and play.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of market structure and market conduct characteristics (such as market concentration, presence of networks operated by global corporations, presence of vertically integrated companies, presence of hypermarket gasoline stations and consumption level) on price-cost margin levels, based on an example of the European Union retail gasoline market.

Methodology: The research applied regression analysis on a panel data set comprising of average monthly price-cost margins for 2012 to 2015, based on the data published in the European Commission Oil Bulletin, and on a set of variables characterizing market structure and market conduct of 24 European Union member state countries.

Findings: The results showed that in the case of retail gasoline markets, higher industrial concentration yields higher price-cost margins with a statistically significant influence of other market structure and conduct factors.

Purpose: The article is devoted to critical refl ection on the commonly used value chain model taking the perspective of contemporary role of client and technological advancement in multifaceted organizational development and management. It attempts to outline and thoroughly describe the new perspective of value creation and value management taking into account digital technologies and social media platforms.

Methodology: Deductive approach have been implemented, secondary data and sources have been used. Finally, the model of Value chain 2.0 was presented, conceptualized and described from both theoretical and practical sides.

Design: The fi rst part of the article is focused on the explanation of present potential of client for any enterprise. The second part attempts to explain the role of virtualization processes, exemplifi ed by social media, semantic web approach or virtual organization in the shift of value creation. Finally, the concept of value chain 2.0 is proposed and discussed.

Findings: There is a rapid transformation of value creation where linearity, control and inter organizational resources are gradually being replaced by network value creation where clients’ activities play pivotal role in organization performance and where value is defi ned in much broader way.

Practical implications: The conclusions have profound meaning for companies and organizations striving for engagement of clients, partners and employees in value creation processes. The paper presents both theoretical foundations along with practical implications for value co-creation.

Originality: The thorough and detailed analysis and interpretation of multifaceted shift and transformation of value creation and value management is presented. The article describes the ways the social media, digital technologies and contemporary marketing influence the way organization.

Purpose: Empirical results about the direct relation of knowledge leading to fi nancial performance at a firm is dispersed. This study aims to examine the impact intellectual capital (IC) has on fi rm performance in Polish and Dutch listed firms.

Methodology: Quantitative data is collected based on audited annual reports from the top 20 companies listed at the Warsaw Stock Exchange and Amsterdam Stock Exchange between 2007 and 2011. IC is measured using the VAIC methodology with its individual elements of HCE, SCE, and CEE. Direct relations between ICE, HCE, and SCE and fi ve measures of fi rm performance are statistically analysed.

Results: The results suggest that there is a direct positive relationship between ICE and fi rm performance of Polish and Dutch listed fi rms, particularly with ROA, ROE, EP, and to a lesser extent with ATO. Firms listed in Poland provide a stronger positive ICE relation to ROA and ROE where fi rms listed in the Netherlands provide a stronger positive ICE relation to EP. Regarding individual elements, HCE relates highly positive to ROA, ROE, and EP where SCE fi nds only partial negative relation with ATO.

Implications: Nurturing IC and in particular HC confirms the importance of fi rm knowledge and employees with right training and other support. Additionally, further clarifi cation regarding SC is required.

Originality: This paper presents the fi rst study of the IC relationship with fi rm performance in Poland as well in the Netherlands. Additionally, the comparison between fi rms of both countries establishes a novelty in IC research.