Socio-economic development is the widest term encompassing a general development tendency of a country, region or territorial unit. The paper undertakes to calculate the level of development of rural and urban-rural communes in the Malopolska province using a method of so called zero unitarization. Ten diagnostic features, homogenous for all communes characterizing economy and local communities were selected. As has been demonstrated by the computations results, disproportions in the development of socio-economic development in the Malopolska province are considerable, particularly concerning the economic development. It has been cor-roborated by the well known opinion about poorly developed eastern part of the province and economically stronger western part. Social development is more ter-ritorially diversified, however the scale of the diversification is much lower. In conclusion the Author referred to research conducted by other authors, testifying the processes of spatial polarization, i.e. growing development differences between the rich or getting rich areas and poor ones. Rich areas develop owing to utilization of their potential and good market condition, whereas poverty areas (also called problem areas) for various reasons remain economically stagnant.
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Local activity groups are new organizations in the sphere of social life in Polish rural areas. They were initiated immediately after Poland's accession to the EU structures owing to Leader +" Pilot Programme in the framework of "Sectoral Operational Programme of restructuring and modernization of food sector and rural development". Its objective was inspiring activity of rural communities and involving them in creating and realization of local development strategies. Another impulse for self-organization of local communities into LAGs was a potential selection of Local Development strategy for realization (in the framework of Rural Development Programme 2007-2013 - axis IV Leader). These activities apparently mobilizing local communities show that creating certain instruments and encouragement through real possibilities of development mobilize rural com-munities for action. Despite the fact that the funds allocated to realization of RDP are not substantial (constituting only c.a. 4.5% of the programme budget), they provide an impulse for local communities to think about a development and con-centrate their energy and resources on this aim, as well as seeking new, not stan-dard ways leading to life quality improvement in rural areas.The article aims at presenting some general rules of constructing budgets for LAGs in Poland and characteristics of the ...
In the 21st century, a social and economic development has obtained a new character and a new pace, because new properties of the surroundings have determined the unusual so far increase of the knowledge value. The knowledge becomes the main instrument for carrying out changes. Therefore, it is worth to take care of its proper management not only in the conditions of an enterprise, which carries out its business aims but also in the process of a long-lasting, laborious formation of potential of a particular region or area. The work herein constitutes a presentation of key ideas which accompany the project formation titled "Knowledge management in the process of building competitiveness and innovativeness of rural areas pursuant to the rules of the sustainable development - an empiric verification on the example of the Małopoksie voivodeship". The research problem which has been undertaken is as follows: Do the worked out solutions in relation to the concept of knowledge management may become a stimuli for the development process which takes place on rural areas? ...
The aim of this paper is to present the context of intellectual capital in rural area development using the example of fuzzy qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), which is one of the few methodological innovations of recent decades and which bridges the gap between quantitative and qualitative research. Based on surveys and interviews with local organizations, the study examined the relationships between the results of work and the composition of variables that constitute intellectual capital components. The results, related to intellectual capital, were divided into three variables representing human capital (education, experience-years of work, language skills), structural capital (presence of IT system in an organization, the number of procedures and processes) and relational capital (the number of cooperating organizations, the number of NGOs in the community, the level of trust in the manager).The research outcomes showed that different combinations of intellectual capital components led in practice to the same result; nevertheless, human capital was an indispensable element of the combination. ...
An attempt to combine the issue of food supply chains, the market of traditional products and food quality schemes was undertaken. The aim of the article was to indicate and discuss the most important factors influencing functioning of food supply chains in the context of food quality schemes existing in the European Union and on the domestic market. The following factors: food quality systems in force, added value in the entire food supply chains, requirements and nature of demand (consumer choices), challenges of the concept of sustainable development, collaboration and cooperation of the participants in the supply chain were discussed in the article. Attention was also paid to other elements (beyond the scope of this study) that are important in the development of food supply chains and in undertaking further research. ...
The aim of this article is to present a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis - fsQCA) as a methodological concept to evaluate the processes involving knowledge related to the rural development. Selected municipalities, where activities for local development are carried out in everyday work, were a case study. The analysis focuses on the process of knowledge transfer. Transfer is most complex of all processes involving knowledge. It contains several important elements that form a strong foundation for the organization efficiency, namely: knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, dissemination of knowledge and knowledge sharing. On the effectiveness of this process depends largely the level of economic development of the area i.a: update information, faster decision-making, use the different external sources to finance various projects, innovative solutions implementation to acquire competitiveness of the area. ...
National and regional strategies and policies on innovation have been prioritized and innovation is now core to most EU funds and strategies. However, regions are not (should not be) alike in terms of innovation and innovation policy. The development strategies based on innovativeness ideas must include specific local conditions. Effective actions and efforts, to create good environment for innovativeness must bring tangible results. The aim of the paper is comparison of innovativeness on different regions types according to territorial typology: rural, intermediate and urban. The research questions are: Does innovativeness depends on regional typology: urban-rural? Do remote, less developed rural areas have also low achievements (poor performance) in this regard? Innovation output is measured using its hard result, which is number of patent application per capita. To examine group differences according to the innovativeness, the Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted. The test statistic showed, that there is no statistically significant difference between patent applications on different regions types. It has been found that the highest variable value in the whole sample has been calculated in rural group, for rural regions in Switzerland. ...
The goal of the monograph was to:• show sample spheres of functioning and cooperation of institutions acting for rural development and principles of developing processes and procedures for organizing or modernizing informationand knowledge as well as define adequate inventive methods for generating ideas,• elaborate on principles and rules of the methodology for generating ideas in the construction of options for solving problems, formulating criteria and conducting the evaluation of solution variants, selecting the optimal variant and implementing thechosen variant as the final result of the study,• distinguish the sample thematic areas of knowledge managementin rural areas and define adequate methods of creativity and innovation, with pointing out the stages of appropriate methodologies and methods applied.The presentation of the typology and characteristics of inventive methods for generating solutions and creating knowledge, in the context of methodologies to improve organization of rural areas, which strengthentheir competitiveness and innovation based on the principles of sustainable development, was assumed as the main research problem requiring a solution. Problems and methods for generating solutions were defined in conjunction with the study entitled "Organizational standards and rural development in the context of information and knowledge management"(Krakowiak-Bal, Wdowiak, Ziemiańczyk 2017 - subsection 3.3), and the issue of ...
