The article discusses the issue of the development of medical tourism in Poland, in particular, the factors determining this development. It is a form of tourism that is becoming more and more popular not only in Poland but also in other countries around the world. The article is an analysis of the perspectives for the development of medical organizations offering medical treatment in Poland. The article assumes that the development of this selected branch of tourism entails investments and innovations also in the area of medical services and medicine. The method adopted in the article is the analysis of the results of research and existing data regarding the prices of medical operations and procedures in Poland, Germany, the USA, and the United Kingdom. The article aims to present the development factors of Polish medical tourism. 

* Projekt finansowany w ramach programu Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego pod nazwą „Regionalna Inicjatywa Doskonałości” w latach 2019–2022, nr projektu 015/RID/2018/19, kwota finansowania: 10 721 040,00 PLN.

The article characterizes the essence of university social responsibility (USR). Various approaches to SRU strategy implementation are presented. The methods and scope of the USR strategy were discussed. The role of stakeholders and the entity responsible for the strategy were indicated.

The aim of this article is to assess the importance of user charges as a source of revenues in state and local government and factors that impact a volume of these revenues. In order to carry out the research it has been assumed that volume of revenues from fees and user charges are dependent on fiscal decentralization, are positively affected public expenditure and depend on the wealth of a society. Two models—for the whole public sector and for state and local government has been designed. Using a panel of 26 selected OECD countries in period 1995–2016 it has been proved that decentralization is a significant factor only in case of fees and user charges in whole public sector but not significant in decentralized model. As expected fees and user charges positively depend on volume of expenditures in both models and additionally negatively depends on tax burden. 

Organisations which receive external funding have been strongly infl uenced by the call to increase accountability, from one hand, and desire to enhance organisational learning on the other. It has been traditionally argued that tensions and trade-offs between these two are inevitable. However, this article demonstrates that it should not necessarily be the case. By reviewing how accountability and organisational learning is defined, and taking account of the recent advancements in evaluation theory and practice, the article explores the ways in which accountability and learning purposes can be reconciled in one evaluation endeavour. It links different types of accountability with different types (loops) of learning. The main argument put forward is that in today’s complex and dynamic environment with many unexpected twists of events being caused by multiple variables a broader view of accountability coupled with higher level of organisational learning is needed. This is especially true in reference to innovative public interventions aimed at multidimensional social problems such as sustainable development or poverty alleviation. 

The aim of the article is the analysis of invalid votes in elections to regional assemblies in 2014, done on the basis of the studies of voting papers at the National Archives in Kielce. The studies were undertaken within the research project called ‘Your voice, your choice’, conducted by the Stefan Batory Foundation in collaboration with the National Electoral Office, National Electoral Commission and the Head Office of National Archives. The analysis encompassed 29 electoral districts that included: 10 electoral districts from the Lesser-Poland Voivodeship, 7 from the Lublin Voivodeship and 6 from the świetokrzyskie Voivodeship. Apart from indicating the reason for the occurrence of invalid votes in elections to regional assemblies, a detailed classification of the abovementioned votes was provided, that included the division into votes with an extra ‘x’ signs, null votes, votes with signs different than ‘x’, votes with multiple ‘x’ signs and strikethroughs, protest votes and the so- called distinct votes. On this basis a characteristic of territorial variation of these votes was provided.