On 17 March this year, members of the academic community and invited guests gathered at the Advanced Information Technology Centre to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Prof. Karol Adamiecki’s birth. Prof. Adamiecki was the patron of the UE Katowice in the years 1972-2009, and co-founder of management science in Poland.
Journey in the footsteps of Karol Adamiecki The ceremony brought together a great number of people interested in the life of Prof. Adamiecki, the times he was living in and the places related to his life and work. The participants and representatives of partner research centers and institutions were welcomed by Prof. Leszek Żabiński, Rector of the University of Economics in Katowice, who invited them to “take a retrospective journey in the footsteps of the professional and private life of Karol Adamiecki”.
The guests who spoke at the opening of the special presentation session included Prof. Ryszard Borowiecki, Vice-Chairman of the Management and Organization Committee of the Polish Academy of Science, Prof. Leszek Kiełtyka, President of the Scientific Society for Organization and Management, Zbigniew Podraza, Mayor of Dąbrowa Górnicza, and Wiesław Rola, President of the Karol Adamiecki Foundation of the University of Economics in Katowice. The participants were introduced to the theme by Prof. Krystyna Jędralska, Dean of the Faculty of Management, and Prof. Alojzy Czech, Director of the Centre for the History of UE Katowice and the Zawodzie District, who also moderated the session.
Key places and institutions in Karol Adamiecki’s life and work Prof. Czech remarked that Karol Adamiecki’s research work, the harmonization theory in particular, as well as his contributions to management science, are fully edited and relatively well known. On the other hand, we do not know as much about the times he was living and working in. Prof. Czech added that Adamiecki, like any other individual, is – in a sense – the child of his times. The session was a successful attempt at describing the environments and institutions which he was involved with and which in turn shaped him.
Dr Bartłomiej Garczyk from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań talked about St. Petersburg as an academic center at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Later on, Arkadiusz Rybak, Director of the “Sztygarka” City Museum in Dąbrowa Górnicza, took the participants on a journey to his city, also the birthplace (in the 19th century known as Kolonia Reden) of Karol Adamiecki, and described the town and its industry at that time.
The last speaker in this part of the session was Prof. Rafał Kowalczyk from the University of Łódź, who gave a mini-lecture on the heavy industry in southern Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. In the fully packed auditorium, the second part of the session began with a speech by Prof. Tomasz Ochinowski from the University of Warsaw, who talked about Karol Adamiecki’s Warsaw addresses: Rudzki i S-ka, Lilpop, Rau i Loewenstein S.A., Fabryka Parowozów S.A., companies which provided laboratory space for his research and consulting work. Before the screening of the movie about PIMCO 1924 (the Prague International Management Congress) which ended the special presentation session, Prof. Michał Trocki from the Warsaw School of Economics recalled the professors and activists of interwar Warsaw. The speeches were followed by a discussion involving, among others, Prof. Andrzej Szplit, Director of the Institute of Management at the Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce.
In summary of the day dedicated to Karol Adamiecki, Prof. Krystyna Jędralska, Dean of the Faculty of Management, briefly reviewed the main points of the session and thanked everybody for their active participation in this significant event. Cooperation agreement with Dąbrowa Górnicza Immediately before the special presentation session, Zbigniew Podraza, Mayor of Dąbrowa Górnicza, and the Rector Prof. Leszek Żabiński, signed a cooperation agreement between the city of Dąbrowa Górnicza and the University of Economics in Katowice. This was also a good opportunity to mention the 100th anniversary of the city’s charter, celebrated this year. Among other issues, the agreement covers cooperation in indentifying the research areas in economic sciences and related humanities whose findings might be of importance for the commune of Dąbrowa Górnicza and its business environment; it also provides for collaboration in the development of human capital for the commune and arrangement of student internships and work placements.
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