Numer 2/2022

Od redaktora naukowego

Z przyjemnością oddajemy w Państwa ręce kolejny numer pisma naukowego „Studia i Materiały”.

Issue content

The Impact of ESG Factors on Company Share Prices in the European Energy Sector (11 pages)
Author: Aneta Drab
Keywords: ESG, share prices, investing, energy sector, panel study
PP. 4 - 14
DOI: 10.7172/1733-9758.2022.37.1
ESG factors are increasingly becoming an inseparable part in company reports. Despite many difficulties connected with reporting of non-financial activities, there are more and more companies which undertake this difficult task each year. This kind of information is especially important for contemporary investors, who do not only look at the profit on a given investment, but pay more and more attention to the company’s image, methods of operation, approach to employees and the closer and farther environment. The hypothesis was as follows: the ESG factors have an increasing influence on stock prices. A panel study was used for the analysis. The study covered European energy companies which closed their financial year at the end of the calendar years 2010–2021. However, the results of the study did not reliably reflect the impactof ESG on the achieved rates of return because only in the last few years have they begun to gain significance. Previously, their impact was too weak to be shown in studies on larger samples.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak on the Weak-Form Informational Efficiency of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (14 pages)
Author: Jacek Karasiński
Keywords: COVID-19, stock market, efficient market hypothesis, weak-form efficiency, martingale hypothesis
PP. 15 - 28
DOI: 10.7172/1733-9758.2022.37.2
The aim of this paper is to verify whether the COVID-19 outbreak negatively affected the weak-form informational efficiency of the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE). Applying a wild bootstrapped automatic variance ratio test and the rolling window methodology, we verify the martingale hypothesis for daily returns of 437 stocks listed on the Main Market of the WSE i n a research period beginning on January 2nd, 2015 and ending on August 31st, 2020. The percentage of cases in which the martingale hypothesis cannot be rejected is our proxy for the weak-form informational efficiency that we come up with. Despite the rapid and significant price movements, as well as the rise of returns volatility (and thus a likely herd behavior of the market participants), the results obtained do not allow for stating unambiguously that the COVID-19 outbreak negatively affected the weak-form informational efficiency of the WSE. The results turned out to be sector-dependent. Future issue-related studies can apply other proxies of efficiency levels as a unique proxy applied in this study is based only on a wild bootstrapped automatic variance ratio test. The issue-related studies should be also continued as the pandemic is still an ongoing issue. This study comes up with a novel approach to approximating the weak-form informational efficiency, provides regulators, as well as other market participants with valuable information on the WSE efficiency changes in the COVID-19 pandemic times and even its long-term trends.
Study of the Effect on the Introduction of a Lockdown (COVID-19 Pandemic) on Abnormal Return Rate (19 pages)
Author: Marcin Kot
Keywords: behavioral finance, abnormal rates, COVID-19
PP. 29 - 47
DOI: 10.7172/1733-9758.2022.37.3
In general, everyone has an individual approach to investing their capital. In the case of the capital market, two extreme approaches can be observed, for some investors the key is the security of investments while for others it is maximization of profits. There are also many investors who follow their own beliefs when making decisions – the emotional factor. Such behavior is explained by a relatively new field, namely behavioral finance. Its inseparable elements are exchange rate fluctuations. The amplitude of occurring fluctuations increases in case of unexpected random events. One such event was COVID-19 and the announcements of lockdowns in individual countries. The following report investigated the impact of COVID-19 on the capital market, and more specifically, it has been tested in terms of generating abnormal rates of return. The hypothesis of the study was that an announcement of a lockdown resulting in an economic closure generates statistically significant abnormal rates of return in relation to national benchmarks. The study was conducted on the basis of daily closing rates for joint stock companies from six European countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Hungary. The data range covered the period from 1st January 2020 to 30th April 2020. The results of the event study proved that a few companies in the analysis showed sensitivity of their rates of return in relation to COVID-19.
Relationship Marketing in the Work of an Innovation Broker (9 pages)
Author: Jakub Szczepkowski
Keywords: innovation broker, commercialization, relationship marketing, research university
PP. 48 - 56
DOI: 10.7172/1733-9758.2022.37.4
An innovation broker plays an essential role in the commercialization process of scientific research with the participation of business representatives. He is the link between the two worlds – science and business. The main task of innovation brokers is to build relationships with scientists, as well as with the socio-economic environment. Long-term relationships based on loyalty and trust are the essence of relationship marketing. So, is it possible to use elements of relationship marketing in the daily work of an innovation broker? This article aims to try to identify how innovation brokers at Polish universities covered by the “The Excellence Initiative – Research University” program establish and build relationships with representatives of the world of science and business and to determine the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on these relations during and after it. Exploratory qualitative research was carried out using an open questions online questionnaire. The conducted research shows that the relationship marketing strategy applies in the work of an innovation broker.
The Development Process of a Strategy Supporting Organizational Learning in Public Administration. Method of Work and Lessons Learned from the FITOEXPORT Project (8 pages)
Author: Tomasz Rosiak
Keywords: Organizational strategy, Strategy building process, learning organization, innovation
PP. 57 - 64
DOI: 10.7172/1733-9758.2022.37.5
The impact of the knowledge-based economy on contemporary organizations is indisputable. Business often tries to respond to these challenges by trying to build a learning organization. The concept itself is not new and has been developed more or less since the beginning of the 20th century. However, it seems that its advantages are constantly gaining value for more and more organizations. Organizational learning can be defined as an area to explore the study of cognitive and social processes of knowledge in organizations, which are entangled in administrative and work practices (Gomes & Wojahn, 2017). In the case of enterprises, the concept of a learning organization should thus not be a novelty. The ability to learn and improve one’s performance (continuous improvement) has an impact not only on the company’ innovation, understood as the ability to provide modern products. It is also a way of organizing a business model, adjusting to the preferences of individual customer segments, but also as a response to the expectations of younger generations of employees. The emerging question seems to be not whether the public administration should also follow this lead but how it could do so. This work is a case study documenting the process of developing a strategy for a public administration body focused on organizational learning. Although this task is not easy, it can bring many benefits. The key to achieving them is the proper design of the work and the ability to move quickly from the design phase to implementation.