Board diversity, audit committee characteristics and audit quality: The moderating role of control-ownership wedge

Author(s): Aree Saeed Mustafa,Ayoib Che-Ahmad,Sitraselvi Chandren / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

This study illustrates how control-ownership wedge impacts the monitoring role of the corporate board through the quality of audit services in Turkey. Turkey has made essential amendments in the field of external audit in order to enhance the quality of the financial report and integrate its own capital market with that of the EU. It would be of interest to examine the influence of these changes on clients' demand for high quality audit. The agency theory is integrated with the resource dependence theory to show that boards possess distinct incentives and ability to demand high quality audit to monitor management activities. Logistic regression and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) were used for regression estimations. The results indicate that board demographics, cognitive and structural diversity of board of directors, audit committee characteristics and audit quality are complementary and control-ownership wedge weakens the relationship between them which is an unfavorable outcome for minority shareholders. Thus, this study proposes that regulators should increase law enforcement to enhance good corporate governance in Turkey to accommodate the unique features of wedge firms and provide a protected environment for minority shareholders.

Mowa przejęta nicością: retoryczne postawy wobec Nietzscheańskiego żywiołu nicości w poetyce Wallace’a Stevensa i Jarosława Marka Rymkiewicza

Author(s): Kacper Bartczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2017

This essay compares the poetic philosophies of Wallace Stevens and Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz,Stevens’s first Polish translator. In the first part, I trace a deep affinity in the way both poets engage with the Nietzschean-Dionysiac element in language. The Nietzschean dynamism creates a rich conceptual background against which it is possible to understand the process of poetic language merging with nothingness. Both Stevens’s and Rymkiewicz’s early poems are reactions to such conceptual environment: Stevens’s Harmonium and Rymkiewicz’s Co to jest drozd present a way of engaging with nothingness in which the absence of logos becomes a source of the poems’ figurative power. As they attain this power, the poems arrive at a form of self-consciousness. I trace this affinity through the deconstructive figure of catachresis, as it has been applied to Stevens by his deconstructive critic J. Hillis Miller. In the second part, I change the method. Here, I show how the later poetries of Stevens and Rymkiewicz can be approached by replacing Miller’s deconstructive catachresis, with Harold Bloom’s metalepsis. This Bloomian reading allows me to identify a vital difference between the later phases in the two poets. Discussing Stevens’s “Auroras of Autumn” next to Rymkiewicz’s Do widzenia Gawrony, I show how Rymkiewicz diverts sharply from his American Romantic/Modernist counterpart in the way his poetry reads Nietzsche’s trope of the eternal recurrence of the same. For Stevens, this concept is realized in the form of metalepsis, which, as Bloom shows, is a figure allowing the poem to retain its figurative capability while steering its course away from any notion of essence or necessity. In contrast, for Rymkiewicz, the eternal recurrence of the same paves way to an essentialist understanding, and affirmation, of human history as eternal cycle of creation-destruction, a cycle presided over by a mixture of pain, cruelty, and ecstasy. Consequently, I argue that while Stevens’s late poetry remains faithful to figurativeness as the poem’s self-reliance – that is, the poem’s refusal to join forces with any sort of concept or process conceived of as independent from the poem’s re-descriptive capability – Rymkiewicz’s late poems find their visionary power in precisely such joining of forces.

Politics of the Poetic Form: Adam Ważyk and the Americans

Author(s): Marta Koronkiewicz / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The article discusses Adam Ważyk – one of the foremost representatives of the Polish poetic avant-garde – and his meta-poetic reflection on the form of the poem in comparison with the parallel considerations offered, later in the 20th c., by the American poets of the LANGUAGE movement. Most importantly, I mention Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Ron Silliman, and James Scully. These poets saw the poetic practice as part of the active and reconstructive approach to everyday reality, which is an approach that sets them apart from more theoretically predisposed strands of the Marxist literary theory which saw poetic forms mostly as an epiphenomenon of social forces and processes. The idea that is the strongest link between Ważyk and the American poets mentioned above is treating formal poetic innovation as precisely the element that serves the causes of enhancing the potential of language and communication. // Artykuł zestawia elementy metapoetyckiej, formalnej myśli Adama Ważyka – jednego z czołowych twórców i krytyków polskiej awangardy poetyckiej, zaangażowanego przez lata w ruch socjalistyczny – z refleksją na temat formy literackiej obecną u niektórych spośród najważniejszych amerykańskich krytyków literackich szkoły marksistowskiej: Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Rona Sillimana, Jamesa Scully’ego. Owi twórcy i twórczynie, wychodząc – podobnie jak Ważyk – z pozycji poetyckich praktyków (wszyscy pisali zarówno prozę krytyczną, jak i wiersze), stawiali w swojej twórczości nacisk na sprawczą moc poetyckiej formy – jej rolę dla praktyki literackiego wymyślania czy wprowadzania nowych rzeczywistości. To odróżnia ich w pewnym sensie od bardziej teoretycznie czy filozoficznie nastawionych nurtów marksistowskiego literaturoznawstwa, skupionych na formie jako epifenomenie sił społecznych. Zestawiając myśl Ważyka z wymienionymi twórcami, artykuł wskazuje między innymi wspólne dla nich wszystkich rozumienie innowacji jako poszerzanie granic poetyckiego języka i radykalne zwiększanie możliwości komunikacyjnych.

Adam Ważyk, the New Sentence and the question of entropy

Author(s): Paweł Kaczmarski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

In its first section, the article focuses on certain concepts belonging to Adam Ważyk’s theory of poetics. Specifically, I note the role of entropy in Ważyk’s thought on the form of the poem. Ważyk’s thinking of entropy served the poet to regulate his more general conception of the formal constitution of the poem. Although entropy seems to be an unavoidable process, the poet’s role and duty is to partly control it. For Ważyk, such partial containment of entropy is the condition of poetic communication. The second section of the article places the entropy-related tensions identified by Ważyk in the context of poetic debates of the 90’s between Fredric Jameson, a prominent Marxist critic, and the American poets identified as the LANGUAGE group. // W drugiej części artykułu to fundamentalne dla pism Ważyka napięcie połączone zostaje z szerszą debatą historycznie organizującą znaczną część teoretycznej refleksji dwudziestowiecznej lewicy; obserwacje Ważyka zestawione zostają ze sporem o parataksę, stoczonym na początku lat 90. przez amerykańskich poetów związanych z nurtem Language oraz Fredrika Jamesona, jednego z czołowych marksistowskich krytyków literackich. Napięcie między nieuchronnością a szkodliwością entropii, i wynikająca z niego konieczność formy, zostaje wskazane jako analogiczne do napięcia między nieuchronnością a szkodliwością rozproszenia (jako podstawy naraz ponowoczesnego doświadczenia i figury parataksy).

“Alchemy and smoke in a bottle” – contemporary improvisational theater in Poland and the United States

Author(s): Magdalena Szuster / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The article is an attempt to capture improvisational theater as a modern dynamic phenomenon through analyzing its features, definitions and traits in order to characterize the genre and to systematize the current state of knowledge on the subject matter. By comparing and contrasting various aspects and notions of impro(v) in Poland and the United States, the study not only looks at the theater of improvisation through the prism of the “relocation” of the form from its original grounds and implementing it in within a different tradition, but also shows the experimental flexibility of the genre within different cultural traditions and structures. Based largely on interviews with Polish and American improvisers alike, this article is an in-medias-res case study of the contemporary improvised theater in Poland and the USA. // Artykuł jest próbą uchwycenia i opisania współczesnego teatru improwizacji poprzez analizę jego cech, definicji i elementów teatrotwórczych w celu scharakteryzowania i usystematyzowania gatunku. Zestawienie i porównanie różnych aspektów impro(v) w Polsce i Stanach Zjednoczonych pozwala nie tylko spojrzeć na teatr improwizacji poprzez pryzmat próby jego „przeszczepienia” do tradycji polskiej (która korzystała z improwizacji jako narzędzia artystycznego, ale dotychczas nie wynosiła jej do kategorii osobnej formy teatralnej), ale również ukazuje eksperymentalną elastyczność tego gatunku w obrębie różnych tradycji i struktur kulturowych. Oparty w dużej mierze na wywiadach środowiskowych z rodzimymi i amerykańskimi improwizatorami, artykuł ten stanowi swoiste studium przypadku in medias res współczesnego teatru improwizacji w Polsce i USA.

W literaturze polskiej odkrywają głęboką wiedzę o świecie… O studiach polskich na Columbia University

Author(s): Ewa Kołodziejczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2017

Raport cynika? O życiu i twórczości Andrzeja Brychta

Author(s): Sławomir Buryła / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2017

The author of this paper discusses the prose of Andrzej Brycht, comparing it with the writer’s biography and the collective biography and works of the “Współczesność” generation. The article presents and documents the uniqueness of Brycht’s early short stories in the context of his style and skill in building expressive literary characters. This paper closes with an attempt to give the reasons for the writer’s artistic failure.

Bałuty w krzywym zwierciadle: fantasmagoria – literatura – historia. Uwagi nad książką: Jisroel Rabon, Bałuty. Powieść z przedmieścia, pod red. Krystyny Radziszewskiej, Natalii Krynickiej przy współpracy Izabeli Olejnik i Jacka Walickiego.

Author(s): Krzysztof Paweł Woźniak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2017

The article comments on the Polish edition of Izrael Rabon’s Bałut: a roman fun a forsztot (1934). It includes exegesis of a novel, omitted by the publisher. Reminds and discusses earlier transaltion attemps of its parts into Polish. It classifies the Rabon’s work as an action novel, meant, by the author, to be published in parts in a newspaper. The article also portrays a variety of similar works published in Lodz press in 1918–1939. It recognizes the first print publisher and describes the profile of his printing house. Serves as a review of polish-jewish literature scene in Mid War time. It also conveys a polemic with presented in book vision of Baluty district as a place inhabited mainly by Jews and Poles. There is an attempt of correcting mistakes and omissions of the above mentioned publication.

Emanuel Sladek. Neznámý čelný funkcionář SS v Protektorátu Čechy a Morava

Author(s): Jan Zumr / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

The author reconstructs the life story of SS-Oberführer Emanuel Sladek (1902–1947), the third highest-ranking Czech German in the SS hierarchy, who was sentenced to death and executed following WWII. The paper begins with a description of Sladek’s family and professional background and an outline of his politics. From his youth Sladek had been involved in various German nationalist organisations in the Jihlava district, assuming leading positions in several of them, and at the turn of the 1930s actively worked toward the breakup of the Czechoslovak Republic. Following the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia his “service” was rewarded by acceptance into the SS and he was put in charge of the Jihlava 107th SS-Standarte. It was part of the Allgemeine-SS, by far the largest the SS organisation prior to the outbreak of the war. The paper outlines the tasks and activities that Sladek carried out as a senior representative of the Allgemeine-SS in the Protectorate. These ultimately faded markedly as the ambitious Sladek attempted to join the Waffen-SS, which rejected him for a variety of reasons. In conclusion there is a brief description of his trial.

Černé a zelené trojúhelníky. Perzekuce a recepce skupiny asociálních a kriminálních vězňů na příkladu žen deportovaných z českého území do Ravensbrücku

Author(s): Pavla Plachá / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

The author of the paper focuses her attention on so-called asocial and criminal prisoners deported from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. The first part explains the ideological bases and practical steps that led in the Third Reich, with some legal modifications, to the gradual systematic internment and subsequent deportation of so-called asocial individuals and habitual criminals to concentration camps. In view of the feminine theme of the study, a separate chapter is devoted to the persecution of prostitutes. The second part focuses on the everyday lives of the groups of prisoners in question in Ravensbrück, their standing in prison society and their depiction in the memoirs of fellow internees. The conclusion delivers short explorations of the lives of a number of women that highlights the real practice of the authorities’ treatment of these social groups on the territory of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Bezpečnostní situace v Generálním gouvernementu. Pokus o kvantitativní analýzu na základě německých policejních statistik

Author(s): Piotr M. Majewski,Jan Vajskebr / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

The study presents an analysis of German police reports from the General Government which are unknown to historians and are held at the National Archives in Prague. The statistical data contained in the documents present a relatively complex picture of public order in this part of occupied Polish territory seen from the perspective of the German security service. The most important issues include the number of armed incidents, which between January 1942 and April 1944 increased 45 times, reaching 263 “assaults” a day. From the beginning of 1940 to the spring of 1944 there were over 100,000 armed incidents, with as many as 42% of them in the Lublin district, while the quietest districts were Cracow (6%) and Galicia (9%). It can be estimated that only around 10% of those incidents were political in nature; the rest were robberies. The analysed documents also include the level of losses sustained by the occupiers. Specifically, in the General Government between early 1940 and the end of November 1944 at least 1,384 Germans and 990 functionaries of the Polish and Ukrainian auxiliary police service were killed. (The data, however, do not include the losses suffered by the Germans while suppressing the Warsaw Uprising or Wehrmacht losses in police operations from March 1943 on.) A substantial majority of the Germans were killed after 1942, while in the first three years of the occupation they sustained relatively minor losses in the General Government. On the basis of the analysed reports it is also possible to estimate the number of victims of German retaliatory operations. From July 1942 to the end of November 1944 they had at least 43,545 victims, excluding people killed during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising and Jews murdered during anti-partisan operations. Around 40% of them were civilians. In addition, almost 60,000 people were arrested and over 40,000 deported to do forced labour.

„Rád bych byl sloužil déle.“ K odsunu německého katolického kléru z českých zemí

Author(s): Zlatuše Kukánová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

This paper explores the post-war expulsion of Roman Catholic priests from German- speaking parts of Bohemia. For the most part the clerics shared the fates of their parishioners in the Litoměřice and České Budějovice dioceses and in the West Bohemian borderlands, which fell under the Prague archdioceses. It examines the key issues on the table in negotiations between the state administration, the Prague archbishopric and individual bishoprics; the results of the transfer and the undermining, and in some places destruction, of parish networks; questions surrounding the fate of church property; and the handling of church records. It presents specific cases of persecution and departure of priests, from representatives of the Prague archdioceses hierarchy, Bishop Jan Remiger and the St. Vitus’ Cathedral canon Anton Franz, to all the members of the Litoměřice capital, including rural parish priests and chaplains. Following the exodus of church members and hundreds of priests, the Catholic Church – unprepared for such extensive personnel changes – was unable to reconstitute itself and build on previous successes. Frequently it was unable to carry on regular activities such as confessions, religious instruction, seminars and lectures. The overall change in the border regions, which caused social and cultural discontinuity, played into the hands of the state authorities and their efforts to curb the influence of the church.

„Dávám se cele k disposici k pastoraci v pohraničí.“ Snahy o poválečnou obnovu a personální situace litoměřické diecéze po druhé světové válce

Author(s): Michal Sklenář / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

This paper reveals the situation in the Roman Catholic Church in the Czechoslovak Republic after 1945, specifically the conditions for pastoral work in the Litoměřice dioceses. Northern Bohemia was one of the regions most impacted by the transfer of the population following the end of WWII. The church structure on the territory of the Litoměřice bishopric also underwent fundamental change when bishops of German nationality were forced to step down; one canon of Czech origin represented the chapter, which possessed a cathedral, while hundreds of German priests left their parishes and departed across the Czechoslovak border. Representatives of the Litoměřice dioceses looked into various ways of reviving the parish network in places from which the German population had been expelled and to which returnees and new inhabitants from the Bohemian interior were arriving. Alongside a long-term strategy of supporting vocations and the energetic accession of Štěpán Trochta to the position of bishop of the dioceses, another strategy was to call on Czech priests from other dioceses to move to the borderlands. The paper explores the process of incardination of priests into the Litoměřice dioceses, their motivations in taking on the tough conditions of the border area and the moral character of post-war Czech society and the Roman Catholic Church.

Odboj pod kontrolou Státní bezpečnosti. Provokace proti ilegálním skupinám třetího odboje na příkladu akce „Kühnel“

Author(s): Petr Svoboda / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

This case study focuses on Operation Kühnel, a well prepared and in terms of results extraordinarily successful provocative operation carried out by the security forces in the initial phase of the Communist regime. Although most likely the most significant intervention by the State Security (StB) against staff and functionaries at the headquarters of the National Socialist Party (NSP), the operation is not widely known; in view of its scale and significance it is surprising that experts have not hitherto devoted due attention to it. As early as in the post-February 1948 period, the organizational secretary of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party headquarters, Josef Kühnel (1900–1962), oversaw illegal groups, mainly focused on intelligence, preparing the way for a “new” NSP that was to be ready once a political coup had taken place. Kühnel was under orders from Petr Zenkl, the former chairman of the NSP. In early April 1949 Kühnel witnessed a number of arrests among his collaborators, began to fear for his own safety and started planning to flee the country. The State Security was informed about his intentions and decided to use him in an extensive sting operation. In this way, the StB successfully infiltrated illegal organizations connected with the former NSP, monitored them for a long time (even conducting their activities) and in the end gradually wiped them out once their activities ceased to be in the StB’s interest. The operation was based on so-called “separation”, which in reality entailed the secret kidnapping of Kühnel by StB officers posing as members of the illegal resistance movement. Kühnel was later used as a source of information for intelligence purposes. The operation culminated with a ruse today known under the name False Frontier Stone. This centred on a fake border crossing created by the State Security prior to the arrest and conviction of Kühnel. Operation Kühnel, which is closely connected with other sting operations Scout and Svetlana, highlights the existence of an active anti-Communist resistance and proves the existence of a well-developed organizational structure of resistance within the NSP. It is also indisputable and verifiable proof of the ruthlessness of the StB, who in their endeavours to control and manage existing illegal groups commonly resorted to sophisticated intelligence ruses and unlawful provocative methods. In the context of international developments in this period it also shows how deeply members of the Third Resistance were convinced that the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia would collapse.

Střetnutí příslušníků Pohraniční stráže s kurýrem Josefem Maškem aneb neznámý příběh ze Šumavy padesátých let v dobových souvislostech

Author(s): Petr Mallota / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

In the 1950s it wasn’t only people wishing to live in freedom or searching for salvation from the repression of the Communist regime who streamed across the Iron Curtain – so did those who had decided to take on the totalitarian regime. This most frequently occurred within the framework of Western organised intelligence groups. They sent into Czechoslovakia what were called couriers (the State Security dubbed them “cross-border agents”), tasked with espionage missions, building an illegal resistance network and leading persecuted individuals to safety. The ever more closely guarded frontier between the two worlds therefore became an exposed “front line” of the cold War. The study focuses on an event that took place on the Czech-Bavarian border on the night of 13 to 14 July 1950, when courier Josef Mašek, alias Josef Marek, attempted to cross it near the German settlement of Schnellenzipf. On the Czech side, around 200 metres from a border stream, he ran into a Border Guard patrol from the unit at Kunžvart (today Strážný), comprising private first class Josef Příhoda and private Vojtěch Švarc. Mašek was killed in a shootout and later secretly buried under a false identity. Using the available sources, the author recreates this tragic event and the background to it as well as placing the case in the broader context of the intelligence operations of Czechoslovak anti-Communist exiles in the early 1950s. His research also succeeded in uncovering Josef Mašek’s final resting place.

Hledání nepřátel uvnitř KSČ. Fóra, aktéři a konfliktní témata vnitrostranické komunikace v regionální perspektivě (podzim 1950 – jaro 1951)

Author(s): Marián Lóži / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

This study turns the spotlight on internal party communication within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) at the regional and district level in the period from autumn 1950 to spring 1951 when, within the framework of a so-called intensified class struggle, there were great efforts to uncover enemies within the party. It also explores how regional party forums (conferences, committees, and presidia), intended for debate and discussion, functioned during their trials. At the same time, it examines the actions of various party actors: HQ functionaries, regional and district elites, pre-war Communists and the broader party caucus. It details their response to the ongoing campaign and their specific motivations and interests. In addition it attempts to evaluate their significance during so-called purges and what their positions say about the then CPC, its state and the degree of legitimacy it possessed among members.

Okradená strana. Protesty členské základny KSČ proti měnové reformě v roce 1953

Author(s): Jakub Šlouf / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

The subject of the paper is protests by the membership base of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC), which intensified at the turn of May and June 1953 in connection with preparations for a currency reform. Representatives of various groups used the party organisation as a platform of communication by which to express their views, leading to tumultuous discussions at party meetings. Well-off industrial workers, who lost considerable savings and demanded advantageous exchanges of large amounts for members of the working class, protested against the reforms. So did poor Communists, who, by contrast, demanded an equitable approach and tougher interventions against the rich, regardless of their class origins. Some of those involved in the discussion blamed the crisis on members of the former bourgeoisie, while others directed their ire towards the leaders of the post-1948 regime. For a third group there was little difference between the two elites.

Český národní výbor v Londýně proti vládám československé Národní fronty (vybrané dokumenty z let 1945–1947)

Author(s): Jan Cholínský / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

The Czech National Committee (CNC) headed by Lev Prchala, an army general, Karel Locher, a former diplomat of National Liberal orientation, and Vladimír Ležák-Borin, a left-wing journalist, was founded in April 1945 in London with the intention of succeeding the Czech National Association (CNA), which during WWII was in opposition to the Czechoslovak government-in-exile headed by President Edvard Beneš. CNA representatives criticised Beneš’s absolutist position on the exile anti-Nazi resistance as well as his unjustified usage of the title of president, his opposition to a federal arrangement for Czechs and Slovaks and his fundamental foreign policy orientation toward the Soviet Union. Carrying on in this vein, the CNC denounced the post-war political constellation in Czechoslovakia, the authoritarian National Front regime, the inordinate representation of Communists in the government and state bodies and the so-called Košice government programme and its fulfilment: prohibition of centre-right and right-wing political parties, criminalisation of political opponents, terrorising of Sudeten Germans and extensive nationalisation of property. At the same time, the CNC continually warned against the threat of the Sovietisation of Czechoslovakia. The documents presented, containing many controversial statements as well as imprecise and unsubstantiated claims, which are highlighted in the paper’s introduction and notes, are a representative, albeit incomplete, collection of the CNC’s published texts in the period prior to the Communist coup of February 1948. They provide evidence of an unrelenting political battle waged by this small group of Czech exiles who correctly judged that post-war political developments in Czechoslovakia were headed toward unchecked Communist Party rule. However, they had no means of retaliation.

Sedm pražských dnů Ivo Masaříka. Deníkové záznamy o invazi armád Varšavské smlouvy do ČSSR v srpnu 1968

Author(s): Milan Bárta / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

In August this year it will have been 50 years since the armies of five Warsaw Pact states invaded Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, new recollections of eye-witnesses, which help create and refine our picture of those events, continue to appear. At the time of the Prague Spring Ivo Masařík was 27 years old, had completed his university education and was working at the General Directorate of the Fire Service in Prague. He began keeping notes of what he had seen on the first day of the occupation, 21 August 1968, when he learned from the radio that troops were occupying the country. Like thousands of other citizens he took to the streets. He didn’t become actively involved in the resistance against the occupiers but instead spent days crisscrossing central Prague, recording and photographing the unfolding occupation. During the day he observed and in the evenings he wrote notes, which literally constitute a first-hand account. Masařík’s photographs from that time are being made public for the first time.

Rozhovor s Radomírem Malým

Author(s): Karel Konečný / Language(s): Czech Issue: 32/2018

An Interview with Radomír Malý who represnts Moravian Catholicism about his life and the activities of Catholic dissent in Moravia during the time of normalization.