This paper presents the results of a survey concerning energy literacy conducted among a group of 913 students at the Cracow University of Economics in Poland—a country whose power system is still primarily based on burning coal and where the prospects of the closure of the mining sector present particularly difficult challenges. The aim of the study was to investigate specific aspects of energy literacy such as knowledge, behaviour, attitudes, and self-efficacy, and to determine what affects them using multivariate linear regression analysis. According to the findings, the primary factors determining energy literacy are gender, going away from home to study, and the experience of energy poverty. Self-efficacy, attitude, and the pro-ecological elements of both attitude and knowledge are the factors that have the most impact on students’ behaviour. The absence of a statistically significant impact of general knowledge on behaviour is a critical presumption for developing the premises of an effective pro-environment energy strategy. Based on the data, we present a number of policy proposals, including informational activity as well as ways of influencing the emotional and behavioural domains.

This chapter discusses Cracow’s emergence as one of the most attractive destinations worldwide for the global business and IT services sector, tracing the sources of the city’s evolution from a low-cost offshoring and outsourcing hub to a byword for high class in-house service delivery and product development. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the relationships between the rapid development of the Fintech industry and the changes that have occurred in recent years in outsourcing and offshoring centres, including in the context of Brexit. The authors explore the consequences of technological progress for the embeddedness of offshoring locations, including the development of digital platforms that create the so-called two-sided markets. Next, drawing on data obtained from the available macro- and meso-economic databases as well as from qualitative and quantitative research conducted in the business services sector firms in Cracow, they discuss the impact of these processes on global corporations.

The aim of this article is to discussone of the practical ways in which the perspective of interactive governance can be applied to managing the sphere of public policy. It focuses on the city lab idea understood asa platform for generating innovationthrough the interaction of public authorities witha variety of stakeholders. The article begins with the presentation of the essence of interactive governance and the approaches to the idea adopted in the literature. Next, the idea of the city lab platformis considered in the context of its key operating principles. Drawing on three basic models of public management (i.e. ideal bureaucracy, new public management and public governance), and the concept of the neo-Weberian state, which has been gaining popularity in recent years, the authors identify and analyse the coordination mechanism used in the city lab. Conclusions offer a summary of the main aspects of the interactive perspective on generating innovation in urban areas. Метою статті є обговорення одного з практичних шляхів використання інтерактивного підходу до управління сферою публічної політики. Основна увага приділяється ідеї міської лабораторії (city lab), що сприймається як платформа для генерування інновацій через взаємодію органів публічної влади з різними зацікавленими сторонами. Стаття починається з викладу сутності інтерактивного управління та підходів до його розуміння, що розглядаються в літературі. Також розглядається ідея платформи міської лабораторії в контексті основних принципів її роботи. Спираючись на три основні моделі публічного врядування (тобто ідеальна бюрократія, новий публічний менеджмент та публічне врядування) та концепцію нової веберівської держави, яка набирає все більшої популярності в останні роки, автори визначають та аналізують механізм координації, який використовується в міській лабораторії. Висновки пропонують короткий підсумок основних аспектів інтерактивного напрямку розвитку інновацій у містах.

Steering social processes becomes more and more problematic, which implies the necessity to seek new, more sophisticated methods of public policy and forms of social coordination. The condition for their development and then their effective implementation is to learn nature and logic of action of complex social systems, the objective that can largely be met by using system approach. The paper concerns possibilities to use virtues of thinking in system categories for conceptualization and projection of actions in public sphere. Reflection on the social complexity phenomenon and determinants of system approach application as a method to reduce such complexity, in order to capture the logics of social systems, represents a starting point. Key research issue is represented by deliberations on public governance expressed as steering complex social systems. A lot of effort has been devoted to self-organization phenomenon while making use of the scientific outputs of cybernetics and macrosociology. The conclusion is that in the conditions of complexity and high dynamics of processes, the efficacy of public governance depends on the abilities to use endogenic potentials of social systems. Redefinition of government role in public authority area should be aimed at, through giving up top-down and narrowly defined interventions for exercising general supervision and active leadership. Thus soft forms of coordination should be opted for, such as soft law, with the possibility of further, ex post, specification of public policy goals, modelled after standards of contractual relationships. Public actions should have inclusive character, and the goals defined should be an outcome of public debate.