The objective of the paper is to diagnose organisational culture of selected universities and analyse its impact on the innovation processes within them. The subject matter of the study was organisational culture and innovation at universities. The subjects were four selected universities in Poland, Austria, Germany, and Ukraine. The paper provided a definition of organisational culture and its typology. It further discussed the organisational culture of universities and the relationships between organisational culture and innovativeness. The literature review provided foundations for building a model for the formation of a type of organisational culture at universities that is innovation-friendly, which is the added value of the paper. It offers actions worth taking to shape innovation-friendly culture at universities. It is particularly important during difficult time of changing labour market, when universities greatly impact the attitudes of young people. The knowledge of how to shape innovation-friendly organisational culture at universities is necessary for academia to profile future employees in times of continuous changes. To investigate the relationship between organisational culture and the innovativeness of universities, we designed an original survey questionnaire [S1 File]. Organisational culture was diagnosed with the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument by K.S. Cameron and R.E. Quinn. The analyses were conducted in Dell Statistica v. 13.1 (StatSoft Polska). We normalised data from the Likert rating scale using Kaufman’s and Rousseeuw’s formula. We used Spearman’s correlation coefficient and Kendall’s W to calculate correlations. The research shows that the investigated Polish and Austrian universities are dominated by hierarchy and market cultures. On the other hand, the German and Ukrainian universities host all cultures, but clan and adhocracy dominate there. Moreover, the analyses demonstrated that although the adhocracy culture was the least visible in the investigated organisations, it contributes to university innovativeness the most. The conclusions were used to build a model for promoting innovation-friendly organisational culture at universities. The model contains answers to the research questions. In addition, it offers guidelines for shaping organisational culture to bolster innovation at universities. The research identified relationships between organisational culture and university innovativeness and components that create innovation opportunities at universities as its contribution to management theory. When applied in practice, the guidelines can help form the university’s organisational culture bottom-up.

The purpose of the article is to define the material, institutional, and intellectual infrastructure of a region and identify the innovative processes that determine its creation. Our main research hypothesis is that the processes that influence the creation of a region’s infrastructure determine a region’s competitiveness as well. To verify these premises, we conducted a study among the residents and employees of a municipality. The research employed deductive and inductive methods and a qualitative analysis was performed. Pearson’s linear correlation coefficient and factor analysis (inference based on the modal and median values) were used in the study. The research verified the hypothesis that innovative processes influence the creation of a region’s infrastructure and that innovative processes in the studied region exhibit low dynamics, which is caused by financial and psychosocial barriers. The important role of social leaders in municipalities was identified as well, above all as regards building civic society and social activity. The added value of the article is threefold: the developed model of infrastructure construction in the material, institutional, and intellectual dimensions of a region; recommendations for the investigated municipality; and a structured questionnaire that, together with the model, can be used for research in municipalities.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the impact of Industry 4.0 on employee competencies and labour market changes. It is pursued with the research hypothesis that Industry 4.0 affects how employee competencies are shaped today. The original research was based on expert literature and statistical analysis of reported data. The survey involved 154 representatives of nine sectors. The questionnaire was intended mainly for businesses that employ modern technologies. The relationships were analysed using the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. The research leads to the conclusion that the most in-demand competencies in the modern economy are prompt action, logical thinking, team player skills, and ability to change. At the same time, engineering diploma and technical education, project management skills, and ability to work in a multi-generational environment have lost their importance. It has been demonstrated that most sectors preferred similar competencies.