Sebastian Vaduva

Governmental Administration and the Security of Romania in a Global Context

This paper investigates the economic and political management of change, with a view towards increasing administrative performance so as to increase government performance and security. Change is seen as a staple of the post-1989 age of globalized “chaotic changes and uncertainties,” where simply reconciling bureaucracy with democracy can no longer be sufficient for any administration. On the other hand, although globalization seems to have had a “flattening,” i.e. homogenizing, effect on civil society, the management of local market and administrative challenges can only be successfully carried out by thoroughly considering local specifics, not by importing foreign methods or solutions. To illustrate, the authors present the case of Romania, detailing its administrative evolution and difficulties from national state inception to European integration and beyond (ultimately from a normative to a managerial character), pointing out past errors and future recommendations.

Managing Perplexity: Lessons from Inside the Romanian Business Culture

Despite the passage of several decades since the revolution of 1989, there is little professional literature designed to prepare foreign investors for the Romanian business culture. Visitors to this nation discover a friendly people who engage in business practices often characterized as perplexing, frustrating, and imbued with self-defeating actions. The communist period in Romanias history imbedded unethical behavior into the nations culture, including the morally ambiguous practice of favor trading. This paper describes this central business activity and how it shapes business dealings and often undermines opportunities. The cultural context that created the favor trading environment is discussed, and methods for managing this perplexing practice are explained.

Growth, Security and Development in the Romanian Hospitality Industry

This research paper presents the authors’ experiment, an exploratory and causal investigation into the nature and specifics of the Romanian hospitality industry. Namely, they focus on how culture may impact both the involved service provider and the consumer and seek to ascertain, based on participant questionnaires, some of the best practices in the industry, and whether they are standardized across nations and cultures; how the certain differences in cultural norms may affect the strategies and practices of companies; as well as what particular interpersonal traits are desired (or, indeed, required) in the hospitality industry.

A TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO BUSINESS EDUCATION THROUGHOUT FAMILY FIRMS AS COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

Abstract The paper explores the relationship between family businesses (FB), communities of practice (CoP), and entrepreneurship education in the context of the knowledge production and sharing within and between these communities. The relationship between these three spheres of knowledge is presented from a transdisciplinary point of view. The contextual legitimacy identifies the communicational channels between the fields of family businesses and the communities of practice and entrepreneurial education in a transdisciplinary generative synergistic context. The notion of CoP suggests that organizational community boundaries do not correspond with typical functional boundaries, including practice - and person - based networks, while family businesses underlie the necessity of sustainable business education which can be achieved through collaborative interaction in a creative entrepreneurial framework. The paper proposes to find the common ground of the three fields of knowledge and the way these points develop new knowledge windows towards a new entrepreneurial understanding of life, and generating new alternatives.