Symptoms of Polish Listed Companies’ Financialization from the Managers’ Perspective. Empirical Findings

Abstract

Theoretical background: The article discusses the issue of financialization defined as partial decoupling of the financial sector from the real economy. This phenomenon can be considered from the point of view of economies, markets (including commodity markets), financial and non-financial companies as well as household. The article deals with the issue of financialization of Polish listed companies. The main symptom of this phenomenon is increased importance of financial operations in the process of generating added value.

Purpose of the article: To assess the declarative degree of financialization of selected listed companies as well as to identify factors that may be related to the phenomenon of financialization in the analyzed entities.

Research methods: The analysis of literature and presentation of the results of authors’ own qualitative research. In the empirical part, the measures of central tendency, classification based on the k-means method and the Mann–Whitney U test were used.

Main findings: The obtained results suggest that the phenomenon of financialization does not seem to play a significant role in shaping the operating activity of Polish listed companies from the analyzed sectors. In addition, it was shown that the innovative potential, market position, size of the company and sales markets may be related to the degree of finanacialization. This paper contributes to the national literature with the phenomenon of financialization of non-financial enterprises in the context of changes taking place in the enterprise from the financial managers’ perspective.