The issue of ethics in banks is quite complex. The behaviour of banks in recent years significantly deviated from the desired ethical standards. The scale of financial fees imposed on financial institutions is has also been growing. In Poland, the lack of research devoted to conduct makes the assessment of the level of compliance impossible, especially since it would be too superficial to link this assessment of individual banks solely to fines imposed by the PFSA. At the same time it seems that the current lack of conduct regulations sensu stricto do not have a sufficient (direct) impact on the real operations of banks, and the supervisors lack the competence to force fi nancial institutions to behave more ethically. In the United Kingdom, for several years now, an innovative study has been conducted measuring the level of compliance with conduct in credit institutions. In order for the mechanism for awarding ethical behaviour to be eff ective, it must motivate the action of the bank’s shareholders rather than its employees. This paper proposes a new regulatory solution aimed at rewarding the ethical behaviour of banks. It would consist of a six-month assessment of the ethics of banks in Poland, conducted on the basis of a survey and a qualitative study (being an extended version of the cited study from the United Kingdom). Based on the results of such a study, the PFSA could reduce or increase the soft capital requirement by one percentage point.

Th is paper deals with shareholder activism by institutional investors and the scope of their duties to people who commit their savings to undertakings for collective investments. It argues, that due to their unique position within the structure of the corporate decisionmaking process and their fi duciary duties to funds’ participants on one hand and their portfolio companies on the other, asset managers should actively use their voice in corporate aff airs, and do so taking the public interest into account. Th e article sets out with description of changes in ownership structure of public corporations, which led to the unprecedented rise in the infl uence of asset managers on contemporary capital markets. Then, it discusses recent regulatory initiatives to impose a duty to engage in corporate matters on institutional investors. Next part reconstructs three arguments, most commonly deployed in the public debate, in favor of imposing the duties related to institutional investors’ engagement: them being the „owners” of the companies; the fiduciary nature of their relationship to both their portfolio companies and their investors; as well the belief – for which I propose the name of the Spiderman doctrine – that one’s responsibility should be proportionate to one’s power.

In my text, I focus on the practical issue of shaping a moral character among representatives of the Polish banking sector in the face of the requirements that Sectoral Qualifi cationsFramework for Banking (SQFB16) puts before the employees of this sector. Preliminary considerations are devoted to refl ection on the ethical discourse within Polish financial sector and clarifi cation what SQFB is? In the second part of the work I will analyze codes of ethics and incentives which are currently used to shape moral attitudes in professional practice, including in the banking sector will be analyzed. After demonstrating some shortcomings of these tools in the third part, it will indicate possible forms of solving emerging problems and tools appropriate to the requirements of SQFB. In this part, I will try to present an approach to building a moral character based on the Aristotelian virtue ethics. Th e virtue ethics in the classical sense is often contrasted with an interest, selfish economic motivation. I will try to show that it does not have to be that way and with certain assumptions, Aristotle’s concept may be consistent with market activities. In particular, his concept of practical wisdom – phronesis can signifi cantly improve and complement existing mechanisms and help in building moral character in the fi nance sector introduced by SQFB.

The article focuses on the problem of the dialogical dimension of exchange. Th e author treats the exchange as a unit of analysis more relevant to social science than the decision around which mainstream economics is concentrated. The article has two goals. Firstly, it is an attempt to draw attention to the negative function of modern economics, which focuses on decisions and the construction of depersonalized, holistic theoretical structures and loses its proper social dimension from view. Secondly, it is an attempt to look at the exchange of personalities as a kind of interpersonal relations and to show its dialogical character, by referring to the philosophy of E. Lévinas. Starting from the personalist economics as a theory of the duty of action due to the development of the person, the author shows the exchange as a form of dialogue in which mutual responsibility for each other has its expression and which thus has a communityforming character. It indicates the exchange as an important condition for the development of the person.

Researchers and commentators of public life pay great attention to patterns of culture that shape the identity of Poles. From Paweł Jasienica, Aleksander Bocheński, Jerzy Topolski, Witold Kula, Józef Burszty, Józef Tischner, Janusz Hryniewicz, Janusz Tazbir, (and lately from) Ryszard Legutko, Andrzej Leder or Jan Sowa we learn not only how to interpret the history of Poland, but also to what factors inhibit its social and economic development. Th ese fi ndings permeate the public debate about how it should be. Th e more worrying is the relationship between the preferred methodology in these studies and the content of the diagnosis. Th e most common mistakes are unreliable reconstruction of cultural codes and artifacts, (treated as a preliminary assumption) homogeneous model of culture or confusion of long-term processes with processes of social change. So the question is whether the diagnosis burdened with similar weaknesses explains cultural order or refl ects the image of the researcher on it?

The aim of the article is to summarize the discussion on functioning of poviats in Poland, the genesis of their restitution in 1998, as well as the presentation of research results on the poviat administration effi ciency and eff ectiveness and the opinion of local government offi cials from Malopolska Voivodeship. In the discussion on the „poviat reform” prof. W. Kieżun referred to poviats as an example known in the theory of organization and management as the pathological phenomenon of „organizational fi ction.” He also pointed to insuffi cient equipment of the poviat administration in the tools (mainly fi nancial) necessary for independent functioning and development. After twenty years of functioning of poviat it seems to be reasonable to discuss its eff ectiveness, but also the sense of existence in its present shape. In the conclusions, possible directions of changes in territorial organization of Poland, which from the point of view of the eff ectiveness of development policy could be applied, are proposed.

Th is paper presents an analysis of 24 articles and 310 comments under the analyzed articles relating to the OPZZ and ZNP trade union protests of September, 22, 2018 in Warsaw. This analysis presents how and to what extent media contribute to the trade union’s image and which elements of this image resonate with the public. Th e image of the unions, with its origins in the 1980s and 1990s, is still strongly present in the offi cial and personal discourse. Th e union’s image consists of convictions that the unions are politically motivated, act for their own good and gain, union members do not work as hard as the rest of the workers, they belong to the „undeserving rich” class and benefi t from the social unrest. Th e signifi cant change occurred in defining the confl ict in which unions take part. Previously it was a state-union confl ict, where the state was willing to implement rogressive reforms and unions were opposing changes. Currently it is non-union employees-unions, where unions are seen as representatives of the undeserving rich. People when confronted with neutral message concerning the unions tend to ignore it and use their previous convictions about the unions, hence the union’s negative image has been embedded in their world view and they look for information which confi rms their convictions. Conclusions attempts to answer the question how the unions can modify their positive message to appeal successfully to the public.

Th e subject of the article is a refl ection on the phenomenon of the institutionalization of ethics in organizations. Th is process takes various forms, the most popular of which are ethical programs of companies. Th e aim of the article is to confront theoretical assumptions that defi ne patterns of ethical programs with motivations of companies that implement them. An analysis of possible motivations was carried out. Th e assumption was made that the reason for introducing ethical programs determines its detailed solutions and aff ects the effi ciency of its functioning.

Th e article presents the results of research on proecological behaviors of Polish students. Th e study was conducted in 2016. Th e examined group consisted of 624 students from diff erent faculties and universities. According to the results, everyday proecological behaviors and habits, like duplex photocopying and printing, using energy saving bulbs or reusable shopping bags were relatively popular. More advanced proecological behaviors, like buying ecological products or participation in environmental organizations were much less popular. Th e results of the study show small diff erences in proecological behaviors between sexes and only small correlations between proecological everyday habits and participation in proecological actions.

The article is a review of issues related to entrepreneurship using artifi cial intelligence. Particular attention was paid to praxiological and ethical aspects deserving the interest of experienced experts in these disciplines. It is encouraged by the European Commission recent publication the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy Ai document.

Business plays a dominant role in the development of products and services based on Artifi cial Intelligence (AI). Th e challenge is to ensure that products and services based on AI are ethical. Th e diffi culty in dealing with this task stems from the facts that: a. the process of development is not transparent; b. companies do not always want to take part in discussions on the ethics of artifi cial intelligence and adhere to its results; c. the novelty of the issue causes that the results of these discussions do not arise quickly and are not practical. Th e aim of the article is to indicate the diffi culty of conducting research on the ethics of AI developed by business. Th e article has been synthetically presented in what way business responds to ethical challenges brought about by the phenomenon of development of AI. Th e answer to these challenges was also given by the High-Level Working Group appointed by the European Commission to develop a code of artifi cial intelligence.