Research and development expenditures in the sector of Polish enterprises as an instrument of research and development policy

One of the important and open issues in modern businesses is the financing of research and development R&D activities, treated as an instrument of research and development policy. Maintaining the competitiveness of business entities requires the systemic creation and implementation of innovations, which requires expenditure on R&D activities. The aim of this paper is to identify the level, dynamics and structure of expenditures on R&D activities in Poland and in Polish businesses. The time range of the study covers the years 2015–2019 (or 2017–2019 in the analysis of expenditures in the enterprise sector), the scope concerns the financial aspects of R&D activity on a national scale and in the sector of Polish enterprises, and the sources of the data for analysis are publications of Poland's Central Statistical Office (Statistics Poland). The study applied the following methods: a critical and cognitive analysis of literature in identifying the research problem, a descriptive and comparative method in presenting the problem, a statistical method in calculating percentage shares, and a projection method in proposing model solutions. Overall, the analysis found a relatively low level and dynamics of expenditures incurred on R&D in Poland and in the enterprise sector. Therefore, R&D policy among Polish enterprises can be described as conservative and ad hoc in nature.