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The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the formal and informal governance mechanisms of state-owned enterprises operating in a post-transitional economy of Poland.

The study combines legal analysis of Polish regulations in force, review of literature on the Poland’s institutional legacy, and a statistical analysis, based on a data set of 204 management board members, 180 external supervisory board members, and 114 state officials supervising Polish SOEs in 2011.

Legally designed relationships among the management board, supervisory board, and the state treasury, represented by the minister and ministry officials, constitute the key formal governance mechanisms in Polish SOEs. They are, however, complemented by relationships between SOEs and their stakeholders and distorted by other informal phenomena, including informal noninstitutional behavior, mechanisms grounded in cognitive and normative institutions, and perception of the relationship structure by the actors themselves. As a result, key corporate governance actors differ in their perception of governance influences upon SOEs.

This study contributes to policymaking by helping authorities gain a better understanding of the governance challenges in SOEs.

This paper is one of the first and few empirical studies investigating the issue of formal and informal governance mechanisms in SOEs in post-transitional economies of CEE.

The study aims to investigate the impact of state ownership on company market performance, i.e. on share price returns and volatility, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study analyzes data from 125 companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange between 2019 and 2020. Cumulative abnormal rates of return and quarterly standard deviation are used to measure investment return and price volatility. Panel ordinary least square regression models assess the influence of state ownership on stock market dynamics.

Our findings indicate that state ownership has a dual impact on share prices: it reduces both share price growth and volatility. The significant reduction in share price volatility provides evidence that state ownership enhances stability in uncertain market conditions, benefiting from governmental support.

Our findings convey to investors that state ownership promotes share price stability but may not lead to substantial increases in market value. To maintain a stable SOE share price, the state as a shareholder should be credible to investors, i.e. act transparently and inform the market about planned activities.

Previous studies concentrate mainly on the impact of state ownership on financial performance during the pandemic, while in a much lesser scope on market performance. We contribute to the literature by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of state ownership on corporate market performance, particularly during the pandemic, through the lens of agency theory and resource-based theory.

The study aims to explore migrant entrepreneurship in a hitherto overlooked demographic, namely, migrants who have moved away from core-states and towards an economically less developed area. In particular, the study aims to critically evaluate to what extent mainstream theories and findings regarding migrants' ethnic division of labour are applicable in such an “upside down” migratory context.

The study qualitatively analyses 41 privileged core-state (UK, USA and Germany, among others) migrant entrepreneurs who have migrated to Wroclaw, Poland, and positions these findings against a second subject group of 24 migrant entrepreneurs from periphery-states (namely, Ukraine and Belarus).

The study finds that, while the situations of the periphery-state subject group largely lend support to the mainstream literature of migrant entrepreneurship, for those from the core-states subject group it is an altogether different story, whereby these migrants were found to be less likely to employ co-ethnic labour and, instead, were more likely to opt for native, Polish labour.

The study's findings begin to question the universality of migrant entrepreneurship theories which have been formulated within mainstream (semi-)periphery-to-core dominant-subordinate contexts. This, in turn, carries implications for policymakers outside of core-states who may need to carefully consider if such theories are applicable to their specific contexts.

This study not only helps to address a gap in the literature surrounding migrant entrepreneurship within Poland but also a gap within the wider literature in terms of migrant entrepreneurship outside of core-state contexts.