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The aim of the paper is to identify the determinants of the marketing and managerial knowledge transfer from a foreign subsidiary located in a post-transition country to its headquarters established in a developed country.

The authors combined the critical literature studies and empirical research, where the method of Computer-assisted Telephone Interview (CATI) was applied. The empirical data was gathered from 231 manufacturing foreign subsidiaries established in Poland (as one of the post-transition economy). To test the hypotheses logistic regression was applied.

The knowledge accumulated in the foreign subsidiary, the amount and level of novelty of innovation in the foreign subsidiary and its strategic autonomy is crucial for the occurrence of the reverse knowledge transfer. However, the more powerful the foreign subsidiary is, the less eager it is to transfer marketing and managerial knowledge to the headquarters.

The study is concentrated just on the manufacturing sector in the Polish economy. The results are based on the opinions and perception of managers, but they represent the corporate perspective (not their individual ones).

The study provokes asking the question about the proper level of strategic autonomy of a foreign subsidiary. The implication related to the autonomy is much about the proper strategy for human resources management. The obtained results indicate that the intensity of innovation in a foreign subsidiary “translates” to the outflow of knowledge from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarters. Thus, encourages headquarters to let their subsidiaries innovate still monitoring their power.

FSs are entities more or less embedded in the host markets, thus their strength and sustainable existence is important for their stakeholders, in particular – internal entities such as employees and external entities such as suppliers, and other cooperating organisations and institutions in the host market. The contribution of FSs to the innovation performance and knowledge pool of external partners is determined much by their absorptive capacity. Thus, the results obtained indirectly point to the importance of external agents ability to absorb and exploit the knowledge.

The originality of the paper concerns three issues. Firstly, the previous studies are mainly focused on either developed or emerging markets and as a result, the peculiarity of post-transition economies, like Poland has been neglected. Secondly, the determinants of reverse knowledge transfer are presented from the corporate perspective. Thirdly, authors focus on marketing and management knowledge distributed from a foreign subsidiary to its headquarter.

Discusses the definition of corrosion and the meaning it has assumed. Examines the use of polymers and discusses their various problems, such as stretching, deforming and dissolving.

This paper aims to respond to the call for empirical research on cluster internationalization to learn more about the mechanism of cluster internationalization and the intensity of this process in a Polish context, which is specific due to Poland.

The authors provide a conceptual model of cluster internationalization and show results of their own primary, empirical and quantitative research on cluster internationalization in Poland.

The study reveals that Polish clusters are at the beginning of the internationalization process, particularly of the outward internationalization. The most popular mode of internationalization is exports. The level of Polish cluster internationalization operations is relatively low.

Data were provided by cluster managers, but none of the cluster organizations had a reliable monitoring system for the international involvement of cluster members. These results are merely a snapshot; therefore, a longitudinal study should also be carried out.

The research demonstrates that cluster companies can take advantage of internationalization operations performed by cluster organizations. The attempts of Polish government should be directed to push the internationalization of micros and small and medium-sized enterprises via cluster initiatives on the one hand and on the other hand to develop some kind of incentives for large companies to participate in cluster organizations as in reality exports are dominated by large firms.

The main value added of this paper consists in developing the conceptual model of cluster internationalization and applying the model in empirical research on the internationalization of Polish clusters. The study bridges the theory of firm internationalization, especially the approaches to firm internationalization with the theory of clusters. It offers insight into internationalization of clusters in Poland.

This chapter focuses on the junction of space and technology, place and context, on the one hand; and modern industrial systems, on the other hand; as well as the relevance of clusters and Industry 4.0. The authors will first briefly present the basics of cluster, as well as the fourth industrial revolution concepts. Then, the authors will speculate about the possible contribution of clusters to the development of Industry 4.0. This chapter demonstrates that the mechanisms and functionalities provided by clusters seem to be well aligned with the features of modern manufacturing, the industrial Internet and the integrated industry. Hence, it is reasonable to claim that clusters and Industry 4.0 are compatible, not contradictory, terms.

The development of new technologies directly contributed to the emergence of advanced instruments, which in turn enabled the rise of new solutions associated with Industry 4.0 (I4.0). These technologies associated with I4.0 are adapted and used by individual users in diverse ways. Many determinants influence this diversity. One of the significant elements impacting such behaviour is age.

The main objective of this chapter is twofold. Firstly, it is to evaluate the differences among the four generational cohorts in how they use I4.0 tools, and secondly, to develop a conceptual framework of interdependencies between diverse I4.0 tools, their use – along with preferences and attitudes – and the generations as a moderate variable that influences the tools' use. In this chapter, we employ an inductive approach and apply the literature studies according to the SALSA method. This research contributes to the existing literature by framing the interdependencies between individuals' attitudes, their use of I4.0 tools and their age.

We investigate the role of market uncertainties as determinants of the adoption of control and prediction in the internationalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Building on the possibility that uncertain markets may lead to trade-offs between these strategies, as suggested by the convergence between effectuation and internationalization research, we differentiate between uncertainties originated in SMEs’ home and host countries. We test our hypotheses with a cross-country data set encompassing 597 SMEs surveyed in Brazil, China, Poland, and Italy. Our results indicate that home-country uncertainty is related to the adoption of control strategies, while host-country cultural uncertainty is related to prediction efforts. Moreover, internationalization knowledge emerged not as a moderator of these relationships but as a relevant antecedent of both control and prediction. Our findings have implications for the use of effectuation in the study of SME internationalization and also for the conceptualization of the effectuation process itself.

Purpose: Since the referendum in 2016, European companies have taken pre-Brexit measures to face the uncertainty over the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. The purpose of the chapter is to identify and discuss the strategies of Polish companies in face of Brexit.

Methodology: The chapter presents results of an empirical quantitative analysis. The data have been collected with the use of Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) method with a pre-defined questionnaire. The research focuses on 500 Polish companies active in the British market and involves a cluster analysis.

Findings: The conducted analysis enabled us to distinguish four main groups of companies: observers, cautious expanders, opportunity seekers, and diversifiers.

Most of the companies decided to adjust their strategies and take an active approach in the time of uncertainty. The majority relied on their existing product/service portfolio and only the diversifiers engaged in both: new market entries and new product/service development. Data from the survey show that companies feared mostly the “no deal” scenario and many of their decisions ahead of Brexit were motivated by it.

Value: The strategies identified in the analysis relate to those we can find in the Ansoff’s matrix. It has been shown that cautious expanders and diversifiers coincide with the exact Ansoff strategies of Diversification and Market development. Two other strategies, on the other hand – observers and opportunity seekers are hybrids of the existing Ansoff ones.