ABSTRACT. The study presents the spatial aspects of the location of a branch of an international concern in a major city, viz. in Poznań, in terms of commuting streams, both from the city area, and the surrounding area, as well as their variation in the period [2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009]. In order to characterise the spatial arrangement of commuting, the study used centrographic measures to analyse the variation of commuting directions and identify the areas of the greatest concentration. Furthermore, it was observed that there was a regular disproportion between the group of employees commuting from the city area, and the group of employees commuting from the region, the latter of which was smaller. It thus seems that an international concern production plant influences the local labour market to a significant extent, displaying the strongest regional impact within the range of 20 km from its location, with the direction of this influence being clearly related to the plant's location in relation to city borders, which might be linked to better communicational accessibility.

New foreign investments by big international corporations, whether through the purchase of privatised enterprises or greenfield-type ventures, have brought about a disintegration of old co-operation and supply networks and the emergence of new spatial links between plants and their surroundings. An analysis of those new spatial links will rest on journeys to work. As the first and most basic of the links connecting a new enterprise with its new environment and the local community, they are one of the best measures of the plant’s range of impact and an indicator of the extent of its embeddedness in the region. The examples will be the subsidiaries of two international corporations located in Poland: of Swedwood International Ltd. at Chlastawa (Zbąszynek commune, Lubuska Land) and of the German firm, Volkswagen Motor Polska, at Polkowice (Lower Silesia).

Celem pracy jest przedstawienie przebiegu procesów globalizacji zachodzących na płaszczyźnie działalności przemysłowej w wybranych jej działach: hutnictwie i produkcji farmaceutyków. Termin globalizacja, mimo że powszechnie stosowany, jest bardzo niejednoznaczny. W bogatej literaturze poświęconej tej problematyce można znaleźć bardzo wiele definicji i charakterystyk tego procesu. Brak jednoznacznej definicji wynika głównie z tego, że jest to proces wielowymiarowy, który można analizować z różnych punktów widzenia. Niektórzy badacze porównują go z procesami internacjonalizacji, przy czym albo utożsamiają obydwa pojęcia …

In the analysis of changes occurring in large Polish enterprises, special attention was paid to organisational changes as one of the chief aspects of their adaptation to the new economic conditions that also involves the formation of new spatial relations. The analysis makes use of the notional apparatus of the organisation and management science as a discipline concerned with changes in organisation and connected with the geography of enterprises.To give an empirical illustration of the changes, examples are provided of the restructuring of large enterprises like H. Cegielski Poznań S.A. and LECH Browary Wielkopolski S.A. (now Kompania Piwowarska S.A.). On the basis of the empirical research, several features were distinguished to characterise the organisational changes that had taken place in the chosen industrial plants. The organisational changes have mainly made the structures of those plants more flexible through giving autonomy to their internal organisational units, outsourcing and spin-offs. The result has been the appearance of a lot of new small and medium-sized businesses that have taken over the functions given up by the large enterprises. The spatial effect of those changes, in turn, has been the emergence of industrial agglomerations of a new type, with a large number of smaller firms connected through a cooperation network and chiefly performing orders of the large enterprises. Thus, what we observe here is a spatial concentration of collaborating firms and the appearance of agglomeration economies.There are also integration processes in which enterprises join the structures of international corporations, which makes them elements of the modern international industrial space and a part of the industrial networks set up by multinational firms.

Distance learning in all types of schools from March 2020 to the beginning of June 2021 (with a short break in September 2020) was forced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, in Poland, this form of teaching was used sporadically, basically only for extra-curricular activities. The vast majority of teachers did not have any experience in this field. The large-scale introduction of new forms of distance learning and knowledge transfer and enforcement methods created a number of challenges and opened up new opportunities. The presented study attempts to identify the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in the opinion of primary and secondary school teachers in the Wielkopolska region. The analysis was carried out based on empirical material obtained from questionnaires addressed to all teachers from the Wielkopolska region (703 questionnaires were received). The survey results allowed the diagnosis of positive and negative aspects of distance learning. Among advantages, teachers pointed to growing computer competencies and time and money savings due to no need to travel to work. In turn, as disadvantages were demonstrated, the lowering of teaching quality because of the lack of direct contact with pupils and health problems resulting from decreased physical activity and long-term staying at the computer desk. The teachers’ experience in identifying the advantages and disadvantages of distance learning is undoubtedly an excellent and reliable source of information that can be used in the future to improve the distance learning process. The applied approach allowed to obtain representative results, which may transpose into generalizations on the scale of the entire country.