Structural transformation in emerging economies often proceeds without a clear movement of labor into high-productivity sectors. This paper examines that pattern through Uzbekistan, a late-reforming economy in Central Asia, and reads its labor market trajectory against the wider post-socialist experience, drawing on Kazakhstan and Poland as contextual benchmarks. Using shift-share decomposition together with matched domain-specific and pooled panel regressions, we identify the sectors that drove employment change and assess how the supply of graduates relates to sectoral labor absorption. Employment change has followed a mainly service-led path, with manufacturing playing only a limited role in net job creation. The link between education and employment is uneven across sectors. Absorption is stronger in a few knowledge-intensive and highly skilled activities and weaker across several broader training areas. This pattern raises the question of whether labor reallocation is productivity-enhancing and underscores the need to align the expansion of higher education with the changing structure of labor demand.
This article examines the relationship between households’ experiences of rising energy costs and their ecological orientations in selected European countries against the backdrop of the 2022/2023 energy crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Using a survey methodology (computer-assisted web interviewing) in Poland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the research examines how the financial impact of the energy crisis was perceived by households and how this perception correlates with demographic characteristics, financial status, energy use and ecological orientation. The research aims to contribute to the discourse on energy vulnerability and energy poverty from the perspective of the lived experience of household energy bills. The results show that energy price increases are a universal experience among European households, but their intensity varies depending on factors such as age, education, income, location, gender and housing ownership status. Interestingly, the use of renewable energy sources has been found to reduce the perceived negative impact of rising energy costs. Another important finding of the research is that household vulnerability to energy prices is linked to an individual’s ecological orientation. The findings pose a key challenge for sustainable development policies, pointing to the need to balance reducing the financial burden on citizens with the urgent need to protect the environment during energy crises.
The primary objective of this article is to examine how the quality of interpersonal relationships in the workplace influences individuals’ self-assessed quality of life in both professional and private spheres within the Central European context. A supplementary goal is to investigate the extent to which this relationship is moderated by selected demographic characteristics, including gender, age, tenure, job type, and employment sector. The study draws on survey data collected among economically active individuals in Poland, representing the largest economy in the Central European region. The analysis of the primary data employs Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The proposed theoretical framework aims to identify how specific dimensions of interpersonal relationship quality affect two aspects of quality of life, as well as how these effects are moderated by respondents’ demographic traits. The findings confirm that the quality of workplace relationships, particularly the dimension of distance resulting from management style, but also interpersonal relationship-building methods and organizational climate, exerts a significant and positive influence on employees’ self-assessed professional quality of life. In contrast, regarding personal quality of life, only the distance resulting from management style dimension shows a significant and negative effect. Furthermore, the relationship between workplace relationship quality and quality of life is moderated by all analyzed demographic characteristics. The article also discusses the interrelations among the examined dimensions of workplace relationship quality and between the two life-quality dimensions, offering meaningful managerial implications.
The rapid digitalization and development of artificial intelligence have intensified destructive information influences, threatening the integrity of scientific knowledge. This study identifies the evolutionary patterns and conceptual transformations of the academic discourse regarding the use of propaganda in contemporary research activities. Using the R-package Bibliometrix, a systematic bibliometric analysis of 7,973 publications indexed in the Scopus database from 2000 to 2026 was conducted. The results demonstrate a steady growth in publication activity and a shift in research geography from traditional Western hubs toward emerging centers in Southeast Asia. An analysis of the terminology enabled the identification of three stages in the discourse evolution: early ethical categories (2000–2015), the "digital shift" (2016–2021), and the current period (2022–2026), marked by geopolitical threats and the automation of disinformation via AI. It has been established that the discourse has evolved from studying isolated incidents to analyzing complex socio-technical ecosystems. The proposed conceptual framework systematizes the impact of disinformation across four dimensions: the instrumentalization of knowledge, the erosion of epistemological reliability, technological automation, and academic resilience. The findings underscore the strategic importance of developing international security protocols, providing a foundation for further research on the stability of higher education while reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the discourse that integrates security, technological, and ethical dimensions.
Russia’s full-scale invasion has transformed the spatial, infrastructural and financial conditions of Ukrainian business activity, making wartime relocation and adaptive capacity critical issues for economic resilience. This study aims to examine how Ukrainian businesses respond to wartime disruption by identifying the determinants of domestic and international relocation intentions and the latent profiles of business vulnerability and adaptation. The empirical analysis is based on survey data from 606 Ukrainian business representatives. It applies multinomial logit modelling to a complete-case sample of 505 observations, together with latent class analysis using 22 binary indicators. The results show that relocation intentions are heterogeneous: 31.7% of respondents reported no relocation intention, 28.7% had not considered relocation, 21.6% considered relocation within Ukraine and 18.0% considered relocation abroad. Domestic relocation is associated with credit risk (RRR = 1.570), logistics disruption (RRR = 2.277), import decline (RRR = 3.498) and reliance on own funds (RRR = 2.101). Foreign relocation is associated with business severity (RRR = 1.599), import decline (RRR = 4.224) and foreign cooperation, as the absence of foreign cooperation reduces the likelihood of relocation abroad (RRR = 0.343). Latent class analysis identifies two profiles: constrained non-investing firms (39.4%) and active adaptive vulnerable firms (60.6%), which differ significantly in relocation attitudes, χ²(3) = 12.83, p = 0.005, Cramer’s V = 0.146.
