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Manufacturers face increased cost pressure and market volatility. Product life cycles are getting shorter. Production has to be faster and increasingly local. The acceleration of \"time-to-market\" could happen thanks to the solutions of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), with supply chains morphing into highly adaptive networks with integrated entities. In this paper, we seek to exemplify the potential impact of I4.0 adoption upon the competitiveness of the firms (being foreign subsidiaries among others) and ask about the nature of modernization as part of the global value chain in which the enterprise operates. Our research based on four case studies reveals that the competitive advantage of a firm could be modified in the era of Industry 4.0 as a result of a sector's transformation and changing relationships with partners. These findings correspond with the literature stressing the uncertainty and complexity of the digital economy in general, as well as difficulties with the precise measuring of the expected benefits. The fourth industrial revolution emphasizes \"the race to the top\", giving priority to quality rather than cost reduction as a method of improving competitiveness and, since it implies the emergence of connected companies, truly linked with each other, the disappearance of clear boundaries between them.

(1) Background: considering multiple, and somehow conflicting, design objectives can potentially make achieving a high-performance design a complex task to perform. For instance, shading devices can dramatically affect the building performance in various ways, such as energy consumption and daylight. This paper introduces a novel procedure for designing shading devices as an integral part of daylightophil architecture for office buildings by considering daylight and energy performance as objectives to be optimal. (2) Methods: to address the topic, a three-step research method was used. Firstly, three different window shades (fixed and dynamic) were modeled, one of which was inspired by traditional Iranian structures, as the main options for evaluation. Secondly, each option was evaluated for energy performance and daylight-related variables in critical days throughout the year in terms of climatic conditions and daylight situations (equinoxes and solstices including 20 March, 21 June, 22 September, and 21 December). Finally, to achieve a reliable result, apart from the results of the comparison of three options, all possible options for fixed and dynamic shades were analyzed through a multi-objective optimization to compare fixed and dynamic options and to find the optimal condition for dynamic options at different times of the day. (3) Results: through different stages of analysis, the findings suggest that, firstly, dynamic shading devices are more efficient than fixed shading devices in terms of energy efficiency, occupants’ visual comfort, and efficient use of daylight (roughly 10%). Moreover, through analyzing dynamic shading devices in different seasons and different times of the year, the optimal form of this shading device was determined. The results indicate that considering proper shading devices can have a significant improvement on achieving high-performance architecture in office buildings. This implies good potential for daylightophil architecture, but would require further studies to be confirmed as a principle for designing office buildings.

Objective: The objective of the article is to assess the firms’ digital maturity and examine how the adoption of Industry 4.0 solutions affects global value chain (GVC) relationships.Research Design Methods: The study combined a critical literature review with quantitative empirical re-search. We collected the primary data during computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI) among 400 in-dustrial manufacturing firms in Poland.Findings: The study demonstrates that I4.0 technologies adoption modifies the awareness of partners’ pro-gress in digital transformation, affects integration among partners, and leads to changes in GVCs’ diversifica-tion, geographic scope, and governance. Thanks to the study on the digital maturity of firms from a post-transition country, we demonstrated that I4.0 still requires conceptual development and that the emerging theory of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is interdependent with the theory of GVCs.Implications Recommendations: We focused on the disruption caused by the advancement of digital trans-formation in companies that operate in a constellation of relationships and are interdependent in the same GVC. The study recognizes the relationships within the GVC as channels of transmission of challenges, risks, and opportunities that emerge from the disruption. We referred to the case of a post-transition, post-com-munist country in Central and Eastern Europe under digital transformation, which is highly specific yet offers valuable findings transferable to other economies on the eve of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.Contribution Value Added: The novelty of the study lies in the integration of research on digital technology adoption as diagnosed among manufacturing companies in a post-transition country with the inquiry regard-ing their participation and role in GVCs. Thanks to this approach, we identified how firms’ digital maturity reshapes their buyer-supplier relations and, thus, their position in value chains

Research conducted by some authors indicates that an internationalization strategy is less effective if SMEs cooperate in an informal manner. This could be due to the fact that informal cooperation may promote opportunistic behaviour. A formal way of cooperation can be implemented through cluster organizations. The aim of this article is to present the role that a cluster organization can fulfil to promote the internationalization of SMEs. The author focuses on the case of a cluster organization established within the food sector in one region of Poland and presents the case in the context of activities of other European cluster organizations.

Dedicated to Professor Peter Buckley, OBE, this volume of Progress in International Business Research explores the new challenges for MNEs, SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) and INVs (International New Ventures) emerging from this changing and increasingly unpredictable political, economic, social and technological VUCA world.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how national innovation systems may transform innovation input into innovation output in different counties. Using the Global Innovation Index (GII) we discuss what can be understood by the term \"innovation\" and how it is translated into the national level. The research question is founded on the assumption that the higher the innovation input, the higher the innovation output attained by a country. We use cluster analysis to verify our assumption, referring to a total of 228 countries. Afterwards we conduct a more in-depth analysis of two cases (Poland and Bulgaria), where the research question does not find confirmation. Using the cross-comparison method we aim to verify how and why national innovation systems failed (or succeeded) in creating innovations.

This paper seeks to detect (post) crisis tendencies in the international activities of state-owned enterprises (SOE) and sovereign wealth funds (SWF) and identify the main challenges posed in exploring this topic. In doing so it draws on the inductive approach and qualitative method and discusses available studies on recent internalization trends in SOEs and SWFs. The number of SWFs worldwide has been rising since 2008, despite the 2008 crisis which brought heavy losses and negative publicity that caused a rerouting of funds towards domestic purposes. The long-term perspective adopted by SWFs is expected to make less vulnerable to financial market volatility, which should stimulate FDI. SOTNCs are a minority among SOEs in general, i.e. only a fraction of SOEs worldwide can be labeled as state-owned transnational companies; and no exceptional impact of the 2008 crisis is apparent in their functioning The review of selected literature and UNCTAD survey reports is the basis for our conclusions and suggestions for future research avenues.

The last two decades have been characterized by rapid developments in networking and clustering. The first clusters emerged spontaneously, led by internal forces oriented towards competition. Temporary clusters are much more dynamic, searching for othersources of competitive advantage, and cross national borders. This paper is an attempt to identify the effects of knowledge spillovers and knowledge transfer within regional business networks, especially business clusters. These eff ects are associated with the innovations which appear within such networks and clusters. The paper indicates those barriers and solutions that support innovativeness within the networks under study. Knowledge transfer within business networks that shape the innovative environment in the Wielkopolska region has been described using both a theoretical and practical approach. The findings and conclusions of the research provide an opportunity to increase business efficiency within business networks.

We aim to identify internationalization profiles of SMEs for the period immediately following the global economic crisis (years 2010-2013) and characterise them with reference to the firms' competitive potential during the crisis (year 2009), and their competitive position at the end of the analysed period. The study is based on a complementary data set derived from secondary (AMADEUS database) and primary sources of information (computer assisted telephone interviews with top managers) for 553 micro, small and medium firms located in Poland. We conduct a cluster analysis to identify different internationalization profiles of SMEs for the years 2010-2013. In the year of the global economic crisis ambitious investors on average had at their disposal substantially better competitive potential than the remaining two groups. Ambitious exporters were better equipped than cautious internationalizers only in terms of human resources, intangible resources and quality control. Policy support should be particularly oriented towards supplying information about foreign markets and fostering firms in an optimal allocation of their resources. The study suggests that the strategy of diversifying international markets during the economic crisis and recovery can be a means of improving performance and reducing excessive dependence on fluctuations in key markets.

Cooperation and competition as organizational relationships or interactions between two or more organizations have been traditionally perceived as opposites. Behaviour of enterprises has been changing and one can notice that more and more organizations are involved in these two types of relations simultaneously. This paradoxical phenomenon is named as coopetition. The paper focuses on coopetition and internationalization of a company. Coopetition is a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted phenomenon. In this study, the author attempts to identify the interdependencies between the intensity of coopetition and internationalization of a company. On the basis of literature review the author highlights the theoretical background of the concept of coopetition and conceptualizes the term of coopetition. There are proposed three indicators which can be used in order to assess the intensity of coopetition. The theoretical part of the paper is accompanied by the presentation of the results of empirical research which was conducted among fifty two manufacturing and construction companies involved at least in export as an internationalization strategy and located in Wielkopolska. It is located in the western part of Poland and belongs to the best economically prosperous regions in Poland.