Attitudes Towards Work and the Market Economy in Poland

Abstract

[Excerpt] The results of the June, 1989 elections demonstrated the willingness of a majority of the Polish people to initiate the change from a one-party regime to political pluralism. While the past has been rejected, replacing a centrally planned economy with a market economy can neither be achieved overnight nor by simply by voting for it. The traces of the previous centrally planned economy as well as those of the autocratic political system still remain embedded in Polish work-organizations and institutions. Fragments of the former system have survived in the structure of the institutions, in daily routines and habits, and in the minds and conventions of the people.