Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Ethical Issues in Post-1989 Poland
In the opinion of the authors, the political and economic changes that took place in
Poland in 1989 were welcomed by most of the population. However, many of the
subsequent developments were much less desirable. The ICT and automation
domain was opened up to technology transfer from Western countries, while the
share of work carried out in Poland was reduced. It was initially expected that the
Western firms delivering high-tech solutions would make use of highly qualified
local personnel to facilitate a smooth, effective and profitable technology transfer
process. In particular, the ICT and automation pioneers possessed considerable
valuable knowledge which could have been of great value to these firms.
Unfortunately, what happened in practice was rather different.
8.1
The Downfall of Elwro
As indicated earlier, one of the negative effects of the exploitation of ICT and auto-
mation pioneers by PoPs in Poland was a reduction in the quality of management,
with managers using a variety of dirty tricks to obtain promotion. This led to a
downgrading of actual management ability. Poor management resulted in the fur-
ther disadvantages to the firm of an inability to choose profitable products to be
manufactured by Elwro or appropriate partners from the many firms interested in
joint ventures. The owner of Elwro, the government, motivated by free market poli-
cies did not intervene, for instance to replace the apparently incompetent manage-
ment, and allowed the country's largest computer manufacturer to fail.
Finally, Elwro was sold to a very large corporation, which obtained 80% of
Elwro's shares with the employees purchasing 20%. The sale contract stipulated
that Elwro should continue to work in the ICT and automation domain. Unfortunately,
the corporation retained the incompetent managers responsible for Elwro's collapse
but did not employ any of the ICT and automation pioneers. It seems probable that
this was the intention from the start.
Less than a year later, the corporation successfully encouraged the government
to sell the 20% of shares which the employees had earlier bought. Although the
employees were the legal owners of these shares, they were not consulted and did
not receive the payment or even any compensation for the loss of the shares. This
shows both a total lack of respect towards the workers, as well as dishonesty by the
government and large corporation. Most of the employees were encouraged to
resign by high severance payments. The remaining Elwro assets were used briefly
for mechanical and chemical work and subsequently sold.
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