Transformations  in
Business & Economics

Human Capital Management in the Polish Economy
Danuta Kopycińska

ABSTRACT. Systemic transformation occurring in Poland coincided with integration and globalization processes taking place in the contemporary world. Globalization, eliminating barriers to introducing new technologies and information revolution, is transforming the modern industrial era into the era of new economy based mainly on knowledge. Therefore, strong competitive position in the global market can be attained only by countries that are developing knowledge-based economy (KBE) the main element of which is high quality of human capital. The present paper is aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of human capital management in Polish economy in the period 1990-2007, i.e. from the beginning of systemic transformation to the world crisis. As the evaluation of the aforementioned capital is disputable, competitive position achieved by Polish economy in the European Union was adopted as a measure of management effectiveness. Because Poland’s integration into the European Union in 2004 is tantamount to the implementation of EU strategy for creating knowledge-based economy, the evaluation of competitive position may be at the same time the evaluation of the extent to which Poland is becoming involved in the creation of the aforementioned economy.

KEYWORDS: globalization, knowledge-based economy, human capital, competitiveness, Poland.

JEL classification: J64, J24, O15, P2.