Maciej Kisilowski

• Faculty Program Director at Central European University

An unprecedented scandal surrounding a Polish governmental fund established to aid crime victims highlights the role of civil servants in authoritarian state capture. The revelations surrounding the Justice Fund show broad levels of bureaucratic acquiescence with shocking abuses of power, and only belated effort to document and report these abuses....

Reenergized by the former liberal prime minister and EUCO president Donald Tusk, Poland’s democratic forces are well positioned to deliver a stunning upset on Sunday. If this indeed materializes, we must resist the temptation to think of the critical post-election days and weeks as a regular democratic transfer of power. Instead, what will happen s...

This article addresses a theoretical gap in the literature by highlighting the significance of nonbargaining nonmarket strategies of firms. Relying on neo-statist political theory, we propose a theoretical model that hypothesizes a reliance on nonbargaining nonmarket strategies in situations marked by historically and situationally conditioned weak...

Nonmarket strategy – strategic actions directed at influencing the governmental, legal, regulatory, and societal environment of business – is a key factor in an airlines' competitive position yet remains relatively under-analyzed in aviation research. The COVID-19 crisis has created a heightened role for nonmarket strategy and our paper argues that...

Since 2015 the populist government of the Law and Justice Party in Poland has spearheaded a highly effective campaign against the country’s lawyers, encountering relatively muted social opposition. Using Bourdieuan lenses, the article traces the roots of that remarkable institutional weakness of the Polish legal profession to the highly formalist a...

Why do nonmarket strategies of businesses in peripheral economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asian (EECA) differ from those in post-socialist member states of the European Union? This paper suggests an explanation, by offering three advances in our theoretical understanding of the problem. First, we develop a focus on managerial agency in a nonm...

Scholars are increasingly interested in exploring ways to strengthen the rule of law in authoritarian states—especially when deeper political reforms are not attainable. The article contributes to this discussion by revisiting the story of the emergence of the so-called socialist legality in the communist states of Eastern Europe. Using the histori...

This book provides a broadly managerial perspective on key trends that affect business decision-making in Central and Eastern Europe twenty years after the beginning of the region’s transition to market economy. Reflecting different viewpoints, including economic, social, and political approaches, the essays helps managers of the region to understa...