From the Editor
In classical terms, socio-economic development, seen as a process of positve quanttatve and qualitatve change, is an existng phenomenon of advancement that also gives rise to and develops new ones. If you refer to Schumpeter’s concept1 , economic development takes place in an endless process of innovaton, through new producton methods and changing consumpton paterns. As a consequence of the economic development of the era, living standards are changing and public safety is increasing. The multdimensional character of this process results from numerous, and constantly growing, power sources. Nowadays, the main sources of socio-economic development are perceived to be in the changing relatons, and the correlaton between individual elements, of the economic system. This approach underlines the importance of structural and qualitatve changes observed in new combinatons of producton assets, producton methods, and new goods.
The artcles presented in this issue point to various sources of socioeconomic development. According to this latest approach, they include the relatonships, attudes, and competences of various actors. The variety of partcipaton of various enttes in economic enterprises signifcantly stmulates social life and structures them in new dimensions. Individual artcles refer to new relatons in joint ventures between public and private enttes, to the shape of infrastructure projects through social initatves, to new relatonships between legal enttes and ordinary people notceable in the new phenomenon of crowdsourcing, to the importance of trust in socio-economic life, to developing knowledge, and fnally to shaping entrepreneurial skills.
The frst artcle covers the issues of public-private partnership supportng local territorial authorites in Serbia. Sladjana Benkovic, Nemanja Milanovic, and Milos Milosavljevic analyze the potental, and level of use, of private equity investments in the public sector. The authors point out a number of benefts resultng from a public-private partnership. The public sector focuses primarily on the infrastructure needed to provide services, while the private sector, taking into account public utlites, focuses simultaneously on the efectveness of providing services and the fnancial benefts. The business
approach in the provision of public services increases the ratonality of the development policy pursued and reduces the risk of increasing public debt. The research results presented by the authors allow one to draw conclusions regarding the signifcance, potental and needs related to the development of public-private partnerships undertaking business ventures at various levels of local government in Serbia.
In the next artcle, Joanna Próchniak and Anna Zamoyska use the example of the Gdańsk Internatonal Fair in an atempt to examine the social distributon of the costs and benefts of infrastructure projects. The implementaton of efectve, and carefully selected, infrastructure projects determines economic development, including social development. As the authors note, the majority of infrastructure projects do not bring positve fnancial results. Hence, in the assessment of projects, economic aspects are adopted that, in additon to fnancial aspects, include social issues in partcular. However, social aspects are difcult to forecast and measure. By deconstructng social benefts and costs into objectve and subjectve, it makes it possible to compare these two categories and thus evaluate the economic value of a project. Such an approach may be critcal in the decision making process about whether to start a given infrastructure project or when assessing a project in its operatonal phase.
Undoubtedly, crowdsourcing, which is used by various organizatons to engage contributors in shaping products and services or creatng new initatves, is an important and growing source of knowledge acquisiton. Crowdsourcing is the process by which Internet users partcipate in implementng, developing or consolidatng various socio-economic changes. The artcle by Regina Lenart-Gansiniec looks at the use of crowdsourcing in the public sector. The author points out that the relatvely new phenomenon of crowdsourcing requires research and development, especially in the evaluaton of its efectveness, so her research centers on the measurement of crowdsourcing in public organizatons. The proposed acton, which presents ways it is possible to assess the level of implementaton of the adopted tasks and determine the level of obtained results of crowdsourcing, is an essental voice in the discussion on the sources of socio-economic change and the use of informaton technology.
Another vital aspect of socio-economic development is the ability to cocreate based on trusted relatonships and a readiness to cooperate. Wioleta Kucharska has atempted to investgate the relatonship between trust and the culture of cooperaton in the context of tacit knowledge sharing. She tested her research hypotheses in quanttatve studies conducted among specialists in the constructon industry. The primary task was to obtain proof of a correlaton between these two factors. According to the results presented in the artcle and the literature on the subject, trust and cooperaton between team members are the most critcal issues related to the implementaton of constructon projects. Mutual relatons, complexity, the uncertainty of environmental conditons, and tme and budget constraints, which are all characteristc of constructon projects, increase the need for trust and close cooperaton between project partcipants. The success of a project is an expression of socio-economic development at the level of an organizaton or organizatonal network. Therefore, it is reasonable to identfy the key variables, and the correlatons which occur between them, that determine the success of a project.
The issue of trust in business has been the subject of intense research for many years, especially on the multdimensional nature of this phenomenon. Another artcle by Marta Młokosiewicz and Sandra Misiak-Kwit concerns the relatonship between trust and entrepreneurial actvites in Poland. The authors assumed that the formaton of trust in the public sphere, and especially in business relatons in Poland, had an impact on the intensity of entrepreneurial actvites. The research presented in this artcle covers the period 2002–2016 and presents changes in the potental of social trust, including business confdence. The percentage of people trustng various enttes in Poland was assumed as a confdence indicator. As a result of the analysis, the researchers proved that trust in insttutons in Poland is quite low in relaton to the European average and, what is more, there was a low level of general trust. There was a signifcant percentage of polar indicatons, i.e., those dissatsfed with the business environment due to a signifcant degree of distrust, a lack of credibility, and the reliability of contractors. Due to the universality of the phenomenon, it can be considered that distrust is stable in Polish society and business relatonships suppress entrepreneurship.
The research topic of the last artcle looks at a signifcant aspect of socio-economic development. The shaping of entrepreneurial attudes at an academic educaton level is subject to measurement, as well as whether it is possible to analyze the development of entrepreneurship based on the skills developed by students of economic or business universites. Ramona – Diana Leon’s research on developing entrepreneurial skills at European universites was carried out on the basis of an analysis of syllabuses at a selected group of European universites. The author comes to the conclusion that what happens in the educaton sector has an impact not just on business in general but also at a natonal level. Based on multnomial logistc regression it can be stated that several entrepreneurial skills allow one to predict whether a given country will achieve high scores in terms of entrepreneurship development or not. Six skills were highlighted in the study, namely: risk taking, communicaton, problemsolving, teamwork, orientaton towards results and tme management. These searches have both theoretcal and practcal implicatons. The research conducted at a theoretcal level broadens the literature on entrepreneurial skills, providing informaton on the skills which academic programs focus on. At a practcal level, the research provides a valuable insight into the skills of future entrepreneurs. An additonal beneft of the analysis is an indicaton of the relatonship between cultural specifcity and the development of entrepreneurial skills, as well as the entrepreneurial level of a given country. The author postulates some extension to the research area, identfying the following three directons: (i) extending the research to a more signifcant sample of European insttutons of higher educaton; (ii) measuring the entrepreneurial skills of graduates from European business schools; and (iii) analyzing the real entrepreneurial skills developed among graduates.
The Guest Editor of this publicaton would like to thank all of the authors for presentng their valuable research which consttutes an interestng representaton of the contemporary approach to the sources of socio-economic development. At the same tme, she would like to thank all the reviewers who have contributed to improving the artcles for this quarterly issue of JEMI and to contnuing the high standards of the magazine. We hope the artcles presented here in this issue will prove to be compelling reading to scholars all over the world and inspire them on to further research in this fascinatng area.
Dr. Natalia Potoczek
Guest Editor, JEMI
Associate Professor, Wyższa Szkoła Biznesu – Natonal Louis University, Poland