The paper discusses two characters of speculators as shown in two 19th century novels. Zola’s Aristide Saccard incarnates fever, chaos and prodigality of a provincial who has become a millionaire pursuing his dream of fortune. Guy de Maupassant’s William Andermatt is a banker whose extraordinary capacity of making money is based on rationalism, cold calculation and exceptional intuition. Despite all the differences, they both embody three basic features of a businessman: desire, will and power.

In order to fully adapt to market requirements, mining enterprises in recent years have implemented standardized systems for quality, safety and health at work and environmental management. The standards for individual systems define the requirements of applying specific procedures and actions to implement the adopted policy aimed at achieving the assumed goals. The combination of business procedures and practices is more effective in the case of their integration than the activities carried out under separate systems. They then function under the name of an integrated management system (IMS). Properly implemented IMSs most often contributes to a more harmonious functioning of the enterprise and the elimination of recurring activities in the areas concerning individual systems, and thus to the optimization of costs related to their implementation and maintenance. Improving the operational efficiency of the mining enterprise and mines included in it, while maintaining the requirements of work safety and environmental protection. In the conditions of a market economy, improving the efficiency of functioning and providing sources of business financing is a key necefity for mining enterprise (Bąk 2007, 2008). Mines need to be properly managed to survive. The key problem is the design and implementation of an efficient management system and its continuous improvement based on the adequacy of system solutions. This is an answer to the question whether the management system of a mining enterprise (mine) corresponds to its real needs in the process of achieving objectives. Improvement of management systems must be based on an appropriate diagnosis. The aim of the article is to present the original solution, which is a tool for improving the integrated management system in Polish mining enterprises.

In the present dynamic environment, manufacture are required to reduce product development

cycle time and enhance product quality. To meet such challenges many business

are developing closer relationships with their business partner through application of interorganisational

system. Electronic data interchange (EDI) providing a structured form of

communication and has become very popular vehicle for electronic communication. Since

the EDI concept was popularised in 1990, there is a growing recognition by practitioners

and academics. The aim of this study is to perform an analysis of EDI research, give the

current discussion regarding the trends and note the suggestions for the future directions

of EDI research in the manufacture. In this paper, we provide a wide coverage of excessively

citations on EDI from 1990 to 2017 from good references in this area. The papers are

classified into EDI implementation strategy, EDI adoption, EDI integration, EDI in supply

chain and EDI in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The study results of this literature

review are expected to assist development of EDI research especially the implementation of

EDI on production outsourcing as one of supply chain activities.

The article is devoted to topical issues of energy saving management of a business organization.

The concept and essence of saving are considered. Based on the systematization of the totality of

manifestations of saving energy, the following types are distinguished: economic, ecological, ecological-

economic, reputation and social. External and internal factors of saving energy in a business

organization are identified, which reflect the conditions of its operation in the context of saving

energy. It is determined that energy efficiency barriers, which are proposed to be divided into technical-

economic, organizational-behavioral and cognitive, characterize the energy saving process in

terms of restraining factors in improving the efficiency of fuel and energy resources, reflect specific

obstacles within the energy saving process in a particular business organizations and are of an

intra-organizational nature. It is determined that to improve energy saving processes in a business

organization the use cycles of continuous development, in particular, the Deming cycle is advisable.

For the purposes of energy management, the use an appropriate business model that determines

the order of formation of the economic advantage of the entity through energy savings and reflects

a set of solutions that characterize the process of creating value for stakeholders are advisable.

Based on the formalization of the business model of energy efficiency of the business organization,

the use of an saving energy program aimed at removing barriers to energy efficiency and the impact

on internal energy saving factors, as they are the levers that a business organization can influence to

improve energy efficiency, is proposed.

This article aims at constructing a new method for testing the statistical significance of seasonal fluctuations for non-stationary processes. The constructed test is based on a method of subsampling and on the spectral theory of Almost Periodically Correlated (APC) time series. In the article we consider an equation of a nonstationary process, containing a component which includes seasonal fluctuations and business cycle fluctuations, both described by an almost periodic function. We build subsampling test justifying the significance of frequencies obtained from the Fourier representation of the unconditional expectation of the process.

The empirical usefulness of the constructed test is examined for selected macroeconomic data. The article studies survey indicators of economic climate in industry, retail trade and consumption for European countries.

Recently, business protocol discovery has taken more attention in the field of web services. This activity permits a better description of the web service by giving information about its dynamics. The latter is not supported by theWSDL language which concerns only the static part. The problem is that the only information available to construct the dynamic part is the set of log files saving the runtime interaction of the web service with its clients. In this paper, a new approach based on the Discrete Wavelet Transformation (DWT) is proposed to discover the business protocol of web services. The DWT allows reducing the problem space while preserving essential information. It also overcomes the problem of noise in the log files. The proposed approach has been validated using artificially-generated log files.

The industry transformation to the digital model 4.0 will be a significant change from

the perspective of the organisation and processes. In the context of the above, the research

was undertaken, the principal aim of which constituted the attempt to answer the question

concerning the technological advancement level of manufacturing companies operating in

the agricultural machinery sector. It is about identifying what adaptation projects in the

context of the fourth generation industry era should be undertaken by the Polish manufacturers operating in the agricultural machinery sector. The achievement of the main

objective required formulation and implementation of partial objectives, which, according

to the authors, include: C(1) – defining the Industry 4.0 axiom merit; C(2) – using the

subject literature reconstruction and interpretation methods – nomination of areas, on the

one hand essential from the perspective of the model 4.0, and on the other hand those that

may demonstrate the maturity in the domain of the adopted desiderata; C(3) – compilation

of the research model, in the form of an assessment sheet, being a resultant of literature

studies and research conducted among deliberately selected domain experts; C(4) – based

on the selected indicators, the technological advancement level recognition of the studied

companies; specification of a technological gap (questioning among experts).

The spread of digital technologies dramatically changes production processes. The fourth

industrial revolution opens up new opportunities for the introduction of technologies, having

a significant impact on the production cycle, starting with highly automated production lines

and ending with the large-scale implementation of technological solutions designed to improve

productivity, optimize costs, quality and reliability. Defining digital transformations,

primarily in the manufacturing industry, as a strategic imperative for the entire economy

based on opinions and intentions of entrepreneurs (short and medium-term), key aspects of

the digitalization process in Russian medium, high-tech and low-tech manufacturing industries

are revealed. A set of tendencies in the development of digital technologies by their main

types is presented, the level of industry participation in digital transformation is shown, as

well as many other important digital transformation processes in enterprises that are not

measured by quantitative statistics.

The paper features some aspects of providing information security and business continuity to public administration by means of an integrated computer-aided management system OSCAD. The system is based on international standards ISO/IEC 270001 and BS 25999 (ISO 22301). First, the significance of information security and business continuity issues in public administration was presented along with a short introduction to the applied standards. Then the possibilities of the OSCAD system were discussed together with the examples how the system can solve the problems encountered by public administration.

Business ethics – together with other branches of applied ethics – faces a challenge of the validity of its claims. These ethical claims must be convincing for participants of economic life and meet the requirement of impartiality. Of course, philosophical ethics helps in this search. Among many ethical propositions, the emphasis is on those that have sufficient epistemological grounding (often taking the form of a meta-ethical recommendations). Considering this condition, the choice of ethical tools is significantly reduced. For this reason, the search for ethical standards applicable in social practice is continued in the sphere of culture. Meanwhile, this widening of the research field must be done with caution. It is hard to find in culture an answer to the question about the criteria for ethical behavior. Culture, of course, is founded on such criteria. However, there are more of them than would be expected by an ethicist seeking – in this area – a solution to the problem of the validity of an ethical norm. The fact that complicates this search is that the changes that have been taking place in Western culture since the mid-twentieth century are very powerful. Their multi-faceted nature means that their systematization (carried out using the principle of non-contradiction) is not possible. The hypothesis regarding the complexity and heterogeneity of normative beliefs held by Western societies is confirmed (among others) by the analysis of processes initiated by the performative turn. Hence the choice of arguments offered by performance studies. They harmonize with the leading intention of this research paper. They explain why the world of cultural values – despite the multitude of practices of giving them significance – legitimately aspires to be the normative foundation of collective life, including economic life.

25 years after the political transformation in Poland the time has come to assess the reforms and attitudes of entrepreneurs . The role of business leaders turns out to be particularly important in the creation of common good, inclusive of workplaces created by them and an active fight against poverty. On the basis of the most recent social documents of the Catholic Church, the author of the article considers an influence of the globalization and financialisation on the conditions in which Polish entrepreneurs function. For Christian business leaders particularly important are those fundamental and practical principles of business which emerge from the human dignity, common good as well as from such principles as justice and subsidiarity. In the current context knowledge should be combined with spirituality so that those principles can be put into practice. The spirituality of St . Ignatius has always been open to this. The author then points to the activity of those young Christian business leaders in Poland who search for an inspiration in the books of Chris Lowney.