Purpose: The article considers country-level governance factors (legal/regulatory system and financial development) and ownership concentration that impact the value of non-financial firms in Central European nations, specifically by describing a study done in Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Slovenia, and Switzerland.

Methodology: A fixed effect panel data regression analysis was applied to a strongly balanced panel data using a collection of six diverse Central European countries’ non-financial firms across the sample period of 2010–2020.

Results: According to regression analysis, the legal and regulatory system as well as financial development have a positive relationship with firm value. The firm’s value rises as the legal and regulatory system improves. Furthermore, the growth of financial markets adds to the firm’s value. However, our study reveals a negative relationship between ownership concentration and firm value, which indicates that ownership concentration is too high to allow for effective supervision, implying that more ownership concentration lowers firm value, as the expropriation theory suggests.

Originality: The study examines the value of a firm by incorporating both country- and firm-level factors, which broadens the current literature’s insight.
Implications: Overall, our findings add to the literature on the value of non-financial firms by providing new significant information. Some of the recommendations may be beneficial to the long-term success of non-financial companies.

Purpose: Revenue management (RM) practices are well established in the hotel industry. Peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation is a distinctive alternative to hotels, which in its original intention, is managed by non-professionals. The main research question of this study was how the professionalism of P2P accommodation providers relate to their use of RM practices.

Research method: I performed statistical analysis of 479,282 pricing records for 25,827 properties offered through Airbnb in the period of 67 months (August 2015 – February 2021) in Poland. Two indicators of hosts’ professionalism (the number of properties they manage and the possession of superhost status) were tested against three RM practices (cancellation policy, minimum stay, and dynamic pricing).

Findings: This study clearly showed the intensification of P2P hosts’ professionalization in comparison to previous research. Moreover, it proved that professional and non-professional hosts’ behaviors significantly differ when it comes to RM practices application, but the discrepancies are not equally distinctive. The finding that brought a considerably different result in comparison to previous research was the negative relationship between a multi-unit host and minimum stay.

Implications and future research: This study should serve as a warning for hoteliers about the P2P hosts’ professionalization, as they become equal competitors. There are several future extensions to this study, including holiday destinations, testing other than hosts’ professionalism variables, or shedding light on the evolution of RM practices application could reveal valuable insights.

Originality: This study contributes to the existing research by offering the analysis of very recent longitudinal data and covering professional vs. non-professional P2P hosts’ behaviors in terms of three RM practices in Central-Eastern Europe settings.

Purpose: The 21st century has witnessed an explosive growth of both South Korean popular culture (K-pop) and automobiles (K-car) in Western societies. However, K-pop appears to maintain its success better than K-car. This paper will evaluate the origins of K-pop and K-car and determine the distinguishing factors that led to continued K-pop compared to K-car success.

Design/methodology/approach: Suggested claims of artistic/cultural and social/industrial traditions unique to South Korea as causes of the growth in K-pop and K-car success in literature will be evaluated based on historical growth in sales of both products in the US market. Factors of continued success will be evaluated based on how well both industries have been able to maintain their (perceived) brand authenticity, which emphasizes ‘Korean’ cultural values.

Findings: Unlike claims regarding the importance of traditional culture in shaping business success in emergent states, this paper shows that the success of Korean music and cars is not due to artistic/cultural values. Rather, while optimally identifying progress within industries such as digitization in music, South Korea’s unique ability is to deploy its industrial machinery to transform bolder performances and designs originating elsewhere into inoffensive forms with broad cross-cultural appeal. Especially, K-pop’s continued success can be explained through better attention to perceived authenticity, without distinguishing its products too much from known, Western perspectives. Results
also indicate that Korean products do not perform well when companies attempt to take on a leadership role in the industry or develop bold new designs that deviate strongly from Western principles.

Originality/Value: The paper provides unique insights in the similarity of product design and branding, providing tools for evaluating perceived authenticity of a brand and its potential impact on sales. It shows that attention to traditional cultural values may not be a (sufficiently) appropriate strategy for international success. From a Central European perspective, lessons learned by the Korean car and culture industries may lead to new strategic uses of branding and marketing local products and of different forms of governmental/industrial structures to emerge out of the periphery.

Purpose: This article is a conceptual paper based on an extensive literature review performed as a preparation for replicating a study of Japanese hybrid factories in Central and Eastern Europe.

Methodology: It focuses on hybridization showing that although the concept itself originates in evolutionary biology, its application in the feld of International Business bears a strong resemblance with the cultural approach and Japanization.

Findings: Given some recent criticism of the hybridization studies, this article argues that the literature applying the concept would beneft from going back to its origins (i.e. the evolutionary approach), which in itself is a well know paradigm in organizational studies and could help in overcoming current conceptual limitations.

Purpose: This paper investigates the relationship between the internal governance structure and fnancial performance of Polish companies. Ensuring diversity of corporate boards has been on the agenda of various regulators on a national and international level as it is generally expected corporate boards that are more diverse will be more competent and more effective monitoring managerial actions, and therefore positively impact company performance.

Methodology: This paper uses a sample of companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and examines the two main compositional features of company supervisory boards (independence and experience) and their practices by companies. We also investigate the effect of diversity on company performance. As our empirical methodology, we use linear regression analysis.

Findings: Our fndings support the proposal that diversity matters, especially in terms of the presence of experienced members on supervisory boards, and that such diversity positively affects fnancial results. In addition to the main fnding, the results of the study indicate also the importance of the ownership structure. Family frms and companies with a higher level of gearing are more likely to perform less effectively.

Originality: To date, research on the association between supervisory board diversity and fnancial performance in either the Polish or Central and Eastern European capital markets has been limited. The paper also points to the importance of having experienced members on a company’s supervisory board. Independent members on supervisory boards do not seem to have a similar association.

Purpose: The primary purpose of the article is to present the specifcity of Russian boards of directors, critically analyze their main characteristics, and consider their relations to selected corporate governance mechanisms in Russia.

Methodology: The article was prepared based on specialist literature, which pertains to the theoretical aspects of the boards of directors’ activity and the changes in the corporate governance system in Russia. The qualitative research on the boards of directors’ key characteristics in the Russian public companies was based on SPARK data.

Findings: The central features of the boards of directors in the Russian companies depend on the key events in the Russian economy – such as fnancial and economic crises – changes in the companies’ ownership structure, including the participation of the state in ownership, as well as on their activity on the Russian and international fnancial market.

Research limitations: Research limitations resulted mainly from the lack of access to all the data about the directors of the companies under examination, including their independence from or obligation to the state institutions.

Originality: The research on the Russian joint-stock companies – that is, corporate governance in Russia with its mechanisms – is a relatively new issue in the Polish specialist literature. They may be an important trigger for comparative studies in the feld of corporate governance in Central and Eastern European economies.

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: 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 study is based on qualitative methods. The aim of the study has been achieved through 24 semi-structured interviews conducted with senior management, project leaders, and R&D specialists employed at companies operating in the industrial sector in CEE. The time frame covers the period of the fourth quarter of 2016 and the frst quarter of 2017.

Findings: Managing disruption consists of focusing on innovation development stage and following market imperatives by making the innovation try to address the market needs. Balancing portfolio requires considering product and process innovation jointly. Furthermore, 62% of the interviewees say that breakthrough innovation results ultimately from numerous incremental advancements. As far as policy integration is concerned, achieving competitive advantage through internal research is common amongst technological leaders, while market contenders turn to external cooperation. Moreover, incorporating CSV principles into the concept of innovation policy appears to be a necessity. Managing intangibilities comes down to patents.

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: This article explores the gap in the business history literature devoted to Central and Eastern Europe and discusses the potential of conducting business history research in Poland.

Methodology: This is an explorative and tentative study based on a recently developed database of 387 Polish companies which are more than 100 years old.

Findings: The article explores the reasons behind the lack of business history debate in the Polish academia and discusses its future potential. We argue that given the size of population and a unique historical context, the Polish sample is worth studying as it can provide valuable contributions to well established debates in the feld of business history debates covering issues such as continuity, longevity, and survival strategies.

Research limitations and implications: This is an explorative and tentative study and therefore has several limitations, including a limited scope of companies included in the database, sources of data, and poor quality of corporate archives.

Originality and value: This is the frst article explicitly discussing the potential of conducting business history studies in the context of empirical data concerning Polish long-lived companies.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to examine shareholders’ reaction to the decision of the supervisory board to appoint a CEO in companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Methodology: An event study and the mean-adjusted model were applied. The abnormal returns were measured as the CAAR in the entire (-60, + 60) window and selected sub-windows.

Findings: The obtained values of abnormal returns indicate the shareholder’s negative reaction. Throughout the observation window, they oscillate slightly below zero, and in the window (0, +20) they are negative at -1.566%. Irrespective of the observation window, negative abnormal returns were obtained for over half of the observation (52–57%). Therefore, preliminary results indicate the predominance of the information effect over the real one. The decrease in market value as a result of the event may result from an increase in investors’ uncertainty as to the effects of changes in strategy and skills of the new CEO.

Originality: The research is a unique one. To date, no one has carried out research into shareholders’ reaction to a CEO appointment in either the Polish or Central and Eastern European capital markets. They primarily bring the value of cognition of shareholders’ behaviour in the analysed event, which is reflected in share prices. They extend the literature on the signalization instruments, i.e. the activities that boards can undertake due to the new information transmitted to the capital market participants and stakeholders. The market reaction to a CEO appointment will without a doubt interest investors; the institutions responsible for supervision (which in the case of Poland is the Financial Oversight Commission) and the legislator in charge of regulations that prevent insider trading while promoting corporate disclosure transparency.

Purpose: The goal of the paper is to analyse the determinants of the level of ROE (return on equity) for two groups of banks, interrelated by capital links, and their banking sectors.

Methodology: For the case study, we chose companies that, in 2011–2013, were designated by the Financial Stability Board as global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) and their subsidiaries operating in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) as well as their banking sectors. We sought to identify differences in the performance drivers, taking into account bank-specific and country- (or sector-) specific factors.

Findings: We found no significant differences in the level of ROE among the analysed groups; however, we identified a different set of determinants and their impact on ROE.

Purpose: This paper critically evaluates the development of the impact assessment instrument in
Lithuania’s public administration and suggests improvements to its impact assessment system.

Research question: What interesting conceptual imperatives have appeared in Lithuania’s investigation
of the impact of regulatory policy?

Methodology: This research study uses positivist methodology to analyse the problems that researchers
have identified in Lithuania’s impact assessment. This investigation explains why certain
problems have appeared, what has changed and what system changes can be identified traced. The
study proceeds as follows. First, the research on impact assessment carried out in Lithuania is
analysed. Second, regulations on impact assessment in Lithuania are investigated. A substitute for
non-existent integrated theory is emphased by the logical structure of the EU administrative system
imperatives, principles, and norms, whose modifications have become the basis of impact assessment
system design in Lithuania. The present research combines, integrates and consolidates the
theoretical and practical information on impact assessment into an explanatory scheme, which
could be developed into a model in the future. Information from two qualitative interviews conducted
in 2009 and 2010 was also used.

Conclusions: The present research reveals that Lithuania’s regulatory impact assessment model is
still being constructed and reconstructed towards evidence-based management. A model which
revises the old impact stereotype has been designed, based on contemporary methodologies (cost-
-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses), consultations with the interested parties, a small but
exhaustive legal initiatives impact assessment, and a centralised and institutional coordination of
impact assessment.

Practical consequences: The present research presents the issues which could be useful for the
states that are starting to implement a regulatory impact assessment model. This study described
the pitfalls to avoid in order to implement a successful evidence-based management initiative.

Originality: In the present research, regulatory impact assessment is emphased as an assessment
model and normative of the EU administration effectiveness and optimality, which can be used as
a good-practice example for the modernisation of administrative activities in Central and Eastern
Europe to the level their European counterpart

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between ownership structure and the level and scope of internationalization of Polish listed companies.

Methodology: The analysis is based on quantitative methods (regression analysis).

Findings: The study revealed that there is no statistically signifi cant relationship between concentration of ownership and the internationalization of companies. However, there is a relationship between ownership category and internationalization.

Research implications: The research results suggest that the organizational context (and especially ownership structure) should be taken into account in resource-based theories of internationalization.

Originality: The paper makes three important contributions in the fi eld of International Business. Firstly, it incorporates the organizational context into the resource-based models of internationalization, thus contributing to the debate on the role of ownership structure in the internationalization strategy (Tihanyi et al., 2003) by showing the specifi c context of an emerging economy at an early stage of its investment development path. Secondly, it is probably the fi rst attempt to analyze the relationship between ownership structure and the internationalization of Polish companies. Thirdly, it presents the results of one of the few research studies conducted in Central and Eastern Europe regarding the specifi c population of publicly-listed companies.