Generally, the solutions based on information and communication technologies provide positive outcomes for both companies and employees. However, the process of digital transformation can be the cause of digital transformation stress, when the work demands caused by fast implementation of ICT are elevated and employees’ resources are limited. Based on the Job Demand-Resources Model we claim that DT, rapidly accelerating in the COVID-19 pandemic, can increase the level of DTS and general stress at work. To reduce these negative effects of (...) DTS, we propose the online intervention aimed to strengthen employees’ resources, such as self-efficacy. In this article we evaluate the effectiveness of the blended intervention, based on cognitive behavioral therapy and social cognitive therapy, composed of a prototyped online training and series of interactive online workshops. In a longitudinal study, we examined the change in DTS, perceived stress at work, attitudes toward DT, self-efficacy and burnout in two time points, before and after the intervention. We compared five groups of participants, three groups not qualified, and two groups qualified to intervention. Our results revealed that the designed blended intervention decreased DTS and one of the dimensions of burnout, namely disengagement. More specifically, the results showed that in the group of active participants of the blended intervention DTS significantly decreased [MT1 = 3.23, MT2 = 3.00, t = 1.96, p = 0.051], and in the group of ineligible participants DTS significantly increased [MT1 = 1.76, MT2 = 2.02, t = 4.17, p < 0.001]. This research paves way for the creation of blended online intervention which could help in addressing employee digital transformation stress before it starts having adverse effects on employee performance and well-being. (shrink)

Ewa Ziarek fully articulates a feminist aesthetics, focusing on the struggle for freedom in women's literary and political modernism and the devastating impact of racist violence and sexism. She examines the contradiction between women's transformative literary and political practices and the oppressive realities of racist violence and sexism, and she situates these tensions within the entrenched opposition between revolt and melancholia in studies of modernity and within the friction between material injuries and experimental aesthetic forms. Ziarek's political and aesthetic investigations (...) concern the exclusion and destruction of women in politics and literary production and the transformation of this oppression into the inaugural possibilities of writing and action. Her study is one of the first to combine an in-depth engagement with philosophical aesthetics, especially the work of Theodor W. Adorno, with women's literary modernism, particularly the writing of Virginia Woolf and Nella Larsen, along with feminist theories on the politics of race and gender. By bringing seemingly apolitical, gender-neutral debates about modernism's experimental forms together with an analysis of violence and destroyed materialities, Ziarek challenges both the anti-aesthetic subordination of modern literature to its political uses and the appreciation of art's emancipatory potential at the expense of feminist and anti-racist political struggles. (shrink)

What kind of challenge does sexual and racial difference pose for postmodern ethics? What is the relation between ethical obligation and feminist interpretations of embodiment, passion, and eros? How can we negotiate between ethical responsibility for the Other and democratic struggles against domination, injustice, and equality, on the one hand, and internal conflicts within the subject, on the other? We cannot address such questions, Ziarek argues, without putting into dialogue discourses that have hitherto been segregated: postmodern ethics, feminism, race theory, (...) and the idea of radical democracy. Addressing a constellation of diverse thinkers - including Emmanuel Levinas, Patricia Williams, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Frantz Fanon, Julia Kristeva, and Luce Irigaray - the author proposes a new conception of ethics, an ethics of dissensus that rethinks the relation between freedom and obligation in a double context of embodiment and antagonism. (shrink)

Experimental emotion inductions provide the strongest causal evidence of the effects of emotions on psychological and physiological outcomes. In the present qualitative review, we evaluated five common experimental emotion induction techniques: visual stimuli, music, autobiographical recall, situational procedures, and imagery. For each technique, we discuss the extent to which they induce six basic emotions: anger, disgust, surprise, happiness, fear, and sadness. For each emotion, we discuss the relative influences of the induction methods on subjective emotional experience and physiological responses. Based (...) on the literature reviewed, we make emotion-specific recommendations for induction methods to use in experiments. (shrink)

It is reported that medical students both in the U.S. and Poland have experience of interacting with pharmaceutical company representatives (pharma reps) during their school years. Studies have warned that the interaction typically initiated by the pharma reps’ general gift-giving eventually leads to the quid pro quo relationship between the pharma company and the future doctors, the result of which is that the doctors will prescribe their patients drugs in favor of the pharma company. Built upon the existing finding, this (...) research engages in analysis with three foci. The first is to compare attitudinal differences of the American and Polish medical students as they interact with pharma reps. Second, it investigates the role of the different economic and cultural elements (respectively in the U.S. and Poland) in the students’ attitudinal differences. Last, it suggests that the medical schools in both countries should have strict policies and effective education curriculum to help their students better prepare to interact ethically with pharma reps. Since there has been no direct comparative cultural analysis of this kind which is known in a published literature or report, the authors believe that the paper will serve as a catalyst for further research in the area. (shrink)

The introduction of Women and Gender Studies in Polish universities is intrinsically connected with the systemic transformation following 1989. This change was marked by the rejection of the communist past with its nominal sexual equality and acceptance of a conservative culture legally restricting women’s rights. Since the mid-nineties, Women and Gender Studies programs have been instituted in many state and private universities albeit on an auxiliary, extramural bases or as “specialization” within other degrees (e.g., sociology, or cultural studies). Since the (...) mid-2000s, gender studies in Poland include studies of masculinity, gender identity formation and queer theory in addition to the traditional women studies program. After Poland joined the EU, the introduction of European legal standards started to influence the progress in Poland’s gender politics towards greater recognition of minority rights. Gender Studies are in the foreground of these changes in teaching and training students and colleagues in gender issues seen as crucial for building a democratic inclusive society. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to provide a general overview of the work of Wanda Jakubowska, the first Polish, female film director to gain national and international recognition. Her career spanned over 50 years, in which she directed 14 full-length feature films, thus being the longest working film director in the history of Polish cinema. She was also one of the highest profile filmmakers to join the Polish communist party after the Second World War and in subsequent years represented (...) the ‘party line’ among her fellow film-makers, and lobbied the party on behalf of the cinema industry. The article looks at style, ideology and the most important themes of Jakubowska’s work. Its focus is on her films about concentration camps and about contemporary Poland. The article also attempts to establish whether and to what degree Jakubowska was a feminist. (shrink)

The burden of social responsibility is on the pharmaceutical industry. It is producing drugs and medical equipment which have to fulfill high quality standards, because they are very important from society point of view. The main business activity of pharmaceutical companies can be assessed as doing something good. However, a lot of drug producers are also involved in other ways of working for public wellness. There are using a great range of the instruments and programs to manage the corporate social (...) responsibility. The article describes the results of 31 in-depth interviews with the pharmaceutical sales representatives conducted between the June – November 2007. It shows what problems can be created during organizing: charity action, white Sundays, conferences for physicians and other pro bono events. It explains how such actions can meet with public opinion accusations. The main aim of this paper is to answer the questions: What are the advantages of realizing CSR for pharmaceutical companies? Is it true that this conception is used as a marketing tool by drug producers? What the pharmaceutical sales representatives think about charity actions that are conducted in their companies? (shrink)

Within last twenty years in the European Union much regulation concerning advertisements of drugs changed. The aggressive marketing operations of producers of medicines caused that new solutions, not only legal but also ethical, had appeared. The European Union is imposing reliable solutions upon its members in the form of directives to which they must adapt their law. They can however decide to choose stricter law than the one which is recommended to them. The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry and Associations (...) – voluntary organization consisting associations of pharmaceutical companies from lots of countries is acting on similar principles. Each of the members belonging to it can implement its own, more restrictive regulation in the national ethical code than a Federation is ordering. Main purpose of this article is reading what legal and ethical solutions of pharmaceutical marketing were accepted in selected countries of the European Union. Whether they are stricter than the ones imposed upon them by European Union? How in this background Polish regulations are looking like? In the article also examples of the law-breaking and ethical principles by producers of medicines in the European Union will be presented. It will show sanctions taken out towards them for this reason. A question will be put: are various penalties able effectively to scare the pharmaceutical industry off the unethical or even unlawful advertising? (shrink)

Medical schools have a major impact on future doctors’ ethics and their attitudes towards cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry. From childhood, medical students who are related to a physician are exposed to the characteristics of a medical career and learn its professional ethics not only in school but also in the family setting. The present paper sought to answer the research question: ‘How does growing up with a physician influence medical students' perceptions of conflicts of interest in their relationships with (...) industry?’ An anonymous questionnaire was completed by 451 medical students from four Philadelphia medical schools and 554 medical students from Warsaw Medical University during 2013. Medical schools in these two cities were chosen because they are both university cities with similar population sizes. Students who had and who did not have a family member working as a physician were compared using chi-square analysis. Data were analysed for each country separately. For both the US and Poland, there were statistically significant differences between medical students with a physician as a family member and other students with respect to views regarding relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. In both groups, this difference occurred for three important dimensions: students’ relationship with the pharmaceutical industry; students’ views on physicians’ rights to cooperate with the pharmaceutical industry; trust in the pharmaceutical industry. In the US, students related to a doctor were characterized by more restrictive opinions on all three dimensions than other students. However, the contrary was observed in Poland: students with a physician in the family had less strict views than their colleagues. In Poland, a former communist country, physicians transmit a more liberal approach towards collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry to their student relatives than those in the US. (shrink)

How Tocqueville’s ideas can help us build resilient liberal democracies in a divided world How can today’s liberal democracies withstand the illiberal wave sweeping the globe? What can revive our waning faith in constitutional democracy? Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours argues that Alexis de Tocqueville, one of democracy’s greatest champions and most incisive critics, can guide us forward. Drawing on Tocqueville’s major works and lesser-known policy writings, Ewa Atanassow shines a bright light on the foundations of liberal democracy. She argues that (...) its prospects depend on how we tackle three dilemmas that were as urgent in Tocqueville’s day as they are in ours: how to institutionalize popular sovereignty, how to define nationhood, and how to grasp the possibility and limits of global governance. These are pivotal but often neglected dimensions of Tocqueville’s work, and this fresh look at his writings provides a powerful framework for addressing the tensions between liberalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. Recovering a richer liberalism capable of weathering today’s political storms, Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours explains how we can reclaim nationalism as a liberal force and reimagine sovereignty in a global age—and do so with one of democracy’s most discerning thinkers as our guide. (shrink)

I present the scope andcharacteristics of Marx''s interest in Russiaand review its evolution. Initially, Marx''sattitudes were marked by russophobia,pronounced anti-panslavism, assessments ofRussia as an outpost of European reaction andcounterrevolution, and even as the head of aconspiracy to block the world revolution. Withtime, however, Marx came to consider Russia asthe country in which the outbreak of theRevolution was most likely. In his research forsucessive volumes of Capital, he readRussian theoretical works by, among others, V.Bervi-Flerovskij and A. Koshelev. Marx''sattitudes to the anticipated (...) peasant revolutionin Russia remained ambivalent; to a certaindegree he feared its occurrence suspecting thatit could take on an `asiatic'' hue. (shrink)

Przedmiotem artykułu są dokonania plastyków olsztyńskich w pierwszym dziesięcioleciu po II wojnie światowej. | Przedstawiono tu niektóre wyniki prowadzonych badań. Dystans czasowy pozwala obiektywnie spostrzec pierwsze powojenne lata w sztuce, później czas panowania w niej realizmu socjalitycznego nie tylko jako niezwykłe zjawisko artystyczne, ale również I społeczne. Artykuł stara się podkreślić dodatkowy wymiar kulturalny i polityczny działalnośći artystycznej na tzw. Ziemiach Odzyskanych, ukazując dorobek artystyczny plastyki olsztyńskiej usiłuje naszkicować jej miejsce na tle historii sztuki polskiej tego okresu. Jest także próbą (...) zaznaczenia roli sztuki w całokształcie życia w latach 1946-1956 I czynników determinujących postawy twórcze. (shrink)

This paper attempts an overview on the ethical issues of pharmaceutical industry gift-giving in the United States of America. The article shows that law is not the only way in which the relationship between physicians and pharmaceutical industry can be regulated. Most important professional associations of physicians, pharmacists, residents etc. consider industry gifts as a conflict of interest. They created different ethical guidelines for this complicated issue. The paper demonstrates various solutions of ethical matters in the relationship between physicians and (...) pharmaceutical industry by analyzing codes and guidelines of different associations. On the one hand it shows organizations which allow exchanging of gifts of no value. On the other hand it presents associations that forbid physicians accepting even a pen. The article also shows various attitudes of these associations to situations like inviting physicians to dinner, accepting drug samples, taking subsidies from the company to defray the cost of the conference etc. The problem of those relations has been neglected for long time. From society’s point of view it is important for physicians to be informed about the rules and ways that pharmaceutical companies try to influence physicians’ prescription habits. (shrink)

The involvement of the pharmaceutical industry in medical education can be seen as something completely natural. Who better than the producer of the med-icine would know how the drug was developed, how the process of it being au-thorized for sale proceeded, and what the side effects of it are? Today in the United States, more and more colleges are implementing strong pharmaceutical conflict-of-interest policies. Interaction between students and medical school staff with these companies is undesirable, because they share marketing materi-als (...) more often than honest data, and their representatives use various ways to influence these current and future physicians during their meetings. This article will describe research which shows what pharmaceutical mar-keting directed at students looks like in the USA – its character, frequency, and potential impact on future medical decisions. Also, ways of regulating interac-tion between medical schools, their staff and students and the pharmaceutical industry will be expressed. Guidelines of the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Institute of Medicine and the American Medical Student Associa-tion will be described. At the end, questions about their influence on reality and whether medical schools’ policies can be an effective barrier for pharmaceutical marketing on medical schools will be asked. (shrink)

Over the last few years, the pharmaceutical industry intensified marketing activity in Poland. One of the most important ways of promotion are visits by pharmaceutical sales representatives in physicians’ offices. Representatives during those meetings are using different sorts of tactics to manipulate physicians such as: gift-giving, free meals, travel subsidies, “fake” research, ‘white Saturdays’, sponsored teaching and conferences. An ethical ambiguity can be easily find in this work. The paper describes briefly the results of the research concerning the influence of (...) the relationship between physicians with the pharmaceutical companies on prescribing habits which were conducted in other countries. The article presents law regulations and ethical codes present in Poland, but it concentrate on describing the results of 31 in-depth interviews with pharmaceutical sales representatives conducted between the June – November 2007. The main aim of this paper is to show how important are ethical and law standards for the pharmaceutical sales representative. Do they know it? Does companies take care about proper training and information in the area for their employees? Work ethics of the pharmaceutical sales representative is very important, and should be discussed. Drugs are special kind of goods which can influence people health and sometimes even lives so we should pay attention to the ways medicaments are advertise and promote. (shrink)

Over the recent years more and more often we can hear in public debate that pharmaceutical industry is using aggressive marketing to increase the market growth. Their marketing actions are addressed mainly to physicians, because doctors are those who raise gains of pharmaceutical companies in the most considerable extent. The main aim of this paper is to answer the question what kinds of methods pharmaceutical companies are using to influence physicians’ prescribing practice. On examples will be shown how pharmaceutical sales (...) representatives are using reciprocity rule, liking, contrast, authority, scarcity, social proof and consistence to manipulate on doctors. The paper will try to answer the questions: Are physicians aware of influence of pharmaceutical companies? What should be done to increase their awareness? The article is based on the CAWI research. It is analysis of 372 questionnaires filled by physicians. Research was conducted with the support of Medycyna Praktyczna site – one of the most famous websites among the doctors in Poland. (shrink)

An anonymous survey distributed to doctors in Poland revealed the troublesome relationship between physicians and pharmaceutical sale representatives in terms of the frequency of visits, the trust of physicians in information supplied by sales reps, gifts accepted, and the general influence of marketing strategies on physician decisions. Challenges remain, despite laws enacted to address the problem.

Financial exclusion can be considered one of the important problems at the average level of socioeconomic development, which includes, among others, Poland. It consists in the presence of difficulties in accessing and/or using financial products and services on the main market that are suitable for the needs of individuals, and prevents them from leading a normal life in society. Due to its own characteristics and the trends in financial markets, this phenomenon is closely linked to the issue of the digital (...) divide. Accordingly, it can be seen that solutions leading to the reduction of the financial exclusion are based on tools using information technology innovations and modern technologies. One of the methods recognized as the most effective in this area is financial education, which is aimed largely at children and adolescents, which justifies additionally the choice of such tools. It was equally important to determine the extent to which modern instruments are preferred in comparison to traditional ones. The aim of this paper will be the analysis of the solutions based on modern technologies that are used in actions taken to prevent financial exclusion in selected EU countries, including Poland. The structure of the paper is as follows: the first part will present the problem of financial exclusion (identifying groups particularly at risk), then it will review methods of preventing and combating financial exclusion, with particular emphasis on modern ICT tools, and the final part will indicate the possible directions and barriers facing the solutions that may lead to a reduced level of financial exclusion of individuals. The method made use of indepth analysis of the literature and a review of existing solutions, which financial institutions provide on the Web. (shrink)

How do wealth managers understand and comply with the social norms embedded in banks’ codes of conduct (CoC), and how do they cope with ethical dilemmas? Do they have a tendency after the global financial crisis to prioritize banks’ financial security over clients’ interests? To answer these and related questions, we conduct a nonincentivized online survey with wealth management employees of the Swiss legal entity of a large multinational bank. We propose a method to estimate the comprehension and the level (...) of expected adherence to the CoC principles that we test with our sample. We further show that framing questions under the label of “Financial Security” increased response accuracy and that employees’ honesty helped guide their decision-making toward integrity in ethical dilemmas. Thus, in addition to validating a method for testing the level of CoC comprehension and the expected adherence to its principles, our study is among the first to show that in the wealth management business, honesty and social injunctive norms defined in the bank’s CoC reinforce one another. (shrink)