Łukasz Sułkowski

Small and micro businesses form the largest group of entities offering services to tourists in tourist destinations. A majority of them are family businesses accommodation facilities. The study tests the hypothesis that the family nature of a business offering accommodation services can be a source of real competitive advantage being of significance for a certain group of clients. The advantage can be shaped by creating an image based on the owner’s involvement and hospitality. As the literature research indicated, in the case of the businesses described, it is relatively easy to develop a bond between the facility’s manager and their clients. The deliberations were extended by an empirical study conducted on a group of young people from Poland and Ukraine. Its results have indicated that accommodation services are significant elements of the satisfaction among the clients surveyed, and that in the group surveyed, the key reason for a trip is the intention to “experience and learn” and not comfort. It has also been confirmed that the determinants of accommodation services related to broadly defined hospitality are significant, however, not key in the group analyzed.

In modern business, the phenomena of “nepotism” and “cronyism” are often observed, which are usually associated with corruption in the public sector and abuse of public resources. However, these phenomena are international in scale, and no country or sector of the economy is free from them. Existing research does not identify shared and contradictory interests of individuals based on nepotism or cronyism. This study aims to fill this research gap. A research hypothesis was developed and tested in order to determine a point from which nepotism and cronyism are not beneficial to their perpetrators. The research data included Poles and Albanians. According to Transparency International (2022), the obtained results showed that Polish society is currently less vulnerable to corrupt practices than Albanians. Moreover, it was substantiated that relative altruism operates as the mechanism that explains nepotism or cronyism practices. Individuals involved in nepotism or cronyism perceive these practices as a tool to reduce the risk of their operations failing. However, the phenomena lead to long-lasting reciprocity, like in the case of corruption. This study contributes to a better contextual diagnosis of organizations and helps develop preventive strategies.

Manager’s and artist’s professional identities seem to be opposite, but there are many indications that this understanding is not justified in reality. Despite the contradictions, these two identities can intersect. The paper aims to define the characteristics of the artists-managers’ identity. The object of the study was qualitative research (n = 22) conducted in the form of in-depth interviews with key informants from the international environment. The practical objective was to verify common and contradicted features of the artist’s and the manager’s identities among artists-managers to understand the possibilities of reducing the intra-psychic tensions and ways of fruitful paradoxical thinking among managers and negative consequences for personalities and organizations. The study reveals common characteristics between the artist’s and manager’s identities and describes artists-managers’ identity. Although artists-managers experience diversity between both identities, they do not see them as contrary; they use paradoxical thinking, being experts in using personal seemingly contradictory characteristics to achieve outstanding performance. Acting in paradoxical contexts and focusing on the positive aspects of seemingly contradictory personal qualities, they find nonstandard creative solutions. By trying to understand and implement their self-construction, there is the possibility to reduce the intra-psychic tensions and negative consequences of seemingly opposite identities or goals among individuals in organizations. There is a synergy between the manager’s and artist’s identities. Understanding the nature and attributes of artistic creativity, aesthetic theories and the phenomenon of artist-manager’s identity can be a valuable contribution to the practice of management and organizational life.

The study aims to determine whether auditors can use a business model canvas in their operations and how it increases the auditing value. This paper uses qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews with 37 internal auditors from Poland. It shows that the current channel of communicating audit assumptions with requesters is insufficient to facilitate audit processes. The auditors’ communication with their clients is limited by being in their knowledge area. The study presents a modified business model canvas, which fits auditors’ needs. The proposed changes rely on a different sequence of the traditional Osterwalder’s Canvas building blocks. Besides, modified Osterwalder’s model includes Mission, Impact, and Accountability blocks. These blocks, added to the model, make aware audit parties that the auditors are mission-focused and impact-driven on audited organizations and their environment. Adopting the business model canvas framework in the audit process showed potential, as auditors can better explain audit goals and limitations. The study fits the literature related to firms because it emphasizes that creating the process understandability for external parties is a crucial performance point.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Family offices allocate much of their long-horizon capital to directly held real estate, yet the holding vehicle for cross-border property is usually chosen as a tax-minimization detail rather than analyzed as an investment decision. This study aims to determine whether the choice of governance structure affects the after-tax structural efficiency of cross-border residential real estate investment through the alignment between the structure’s tax treatment and the portfolio’s return composition, rather than through statutory tax rates alone. A stylized counterfactual simulation applies five domestic fiscal regimes (German GbR, asset-managing GmbH, commercial GmbH, Canadian individual ownership, and Canadian CCPC) to each of 42 residential and mixed-use properties (34 in Berlin, 8 in Montreal), using audited accounting data for 2017–2023 and a 2018–2028 horizon; after-tax structural efficiency is measured by input-oriented, variable-returns-to-scale Data Envelopment Analysis estimated separately for each regime on the same 42 properties. Mean scores are 0.9583 (GbR), 0.9477 (Canadian individual), 0.9381 (commercial GmbH), 0.9246 (CCPC), and 0.9183 (asset-managing GmbH); 33 of 42 properties change rank across regimes, with gaps up to 10 percentage points. The ranking contradicts statutory tax burdens: the lowest-taxed structure is the least efficient. A pre-tax capital gains ratio, identical under every regime, moderates the efficiency effect of capital gains taxation (interaction 15.4 percentage points, p = 0.009), and the association strengthens with the tax differential (up to ρ = −0.759). Efficient structure choice therefore depends on the fit between return composition and fiscal treatment, regulatory specificity, rather than on headline rates.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank the principals of the family office for access to the property-level accounting records. No external funding was received.