POLISH ENTERPRISES ON THE WAY TO THE KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY

Under dynamic technological and civilisation changes occurring on the global market the key challenge is high adaptiveness of businesses to such processes through building qualitative foundations for competing and active participation in an innovation-driven race. This means following a new development paradigm of maximising the knowledge. These criteria are satisfied by businesses in developed, creative knowledge-based economies (KBE), like Ireland and Finland. The purpose of this paper is to answer a question how to assess the adaptiveness capability of Polish companies to changes occurring globally and requirements of the KBE after Poland's joining the UE. To what extent does integration with the EU influence the scope of imitation of behavior of the so-called learning organisations by Polish businesses? The paper presents an argument that EU accession has been a breakthrough impulse for increasing adaptiveness of Polish companies to compete on the global market in terms of quality and to initiate their path towards the KBE.