Sebastian Văduva

Talent Management and the Quest for Effective Succession Management in the Knowledge-Based Economy

The chaos and uncertainty of the actual global economy create a tremendous pressure on companies’ board of directors. In addition to this, there are other aggravating factors, such as the stakeholders’ attitude (who demand continuous improvement of the leadership’s capacity to increase the performance of the employees). There is also the growing demand for workers with specialized skills (given the influence of the Internet and IT revolution) and the increasing involuntary losses of high-performing workers or managers (because of the intensive headhunting initiatives that occur in the highly specialized personnel segments). The key to overcoming successfully such challenges is an active succession and knowledge-based talent management. A systematic effort to retain and develop the company’s intellectual capital for the future will be the only sustainable differentiation in the competition strives of the next years and it will be the way to unlock the potential of a certain business direction, which has to be fully in line with the strategic vision of a company. The chapter aims to demonstrate that an organization’s long-term performances depend—to a large extent—on the depth, breadth, and effectiveness of its Succession Management and that the efforts to ensure leadership continuity and proper retention of high-value talent are imperative in the attempt to outpace the competition. The chapter starts from revealing the main steps of effective human resource planning, among which succession planning plays an important role, and it continues with advancing a new knowledge-based leadership model that will increase the likelihood of obtaining sustainable business effects in the actual economy. The discussion leads to several study cases that are relevant for the importance of succession planning, namely: Aldis, Edy Spedition, Banca Transilvania, or Tarom.

Management of Risks

In the context of an organization, risk is defined as any event or circumstance that can negatively affect that organization. Risks can appear because of the uncertainty on the financial markets, because of project failures, legal debt, crediting risk, accidents, natural causes, and catastrophes, as well as intentional attacks from a competitor or other unpredictable events. Therefore, we can talk about management risks, such as brand and reputation risk; competition risk; customer risk; bankruptcy and the risk induced by suppliers; operational risks such as the commercial, personnel, technological, and e-risk; and financial risks.

Online Research and Learning Environment to Facilitate the Elaboration of Bachelor’s/Master’s Theses in Multidisciplinary Teams

Usually, the elaboration of a bachelor’s/master’s thesis is a solitary effort of the student, under the supervision of the coordinating professor. The thesis research idea is the result of the interaction between the same two actors, as such it is being limited by factors like: the student’s research capacity; the professor’s expertise; the financial and technological resources, etc. A possible solution for the above-mentioned problem is the development of a national or even international electronic research and learning environment, meant to facilitate the connection between all possible stakeholders in the elaboration of bachelor’s/master’s theses: students, professors, universities, entities interested in innovation/research and publishers. The paper presents an operation model tailored to some basic concepts of modern education, such as: multidisciplinary collaboration, the anchoring in the market’s needs or the use of online tools. The online platform outlined in the paper aims to facilitate: establishing and saving research and learning objectives and documents; classic, video and holography conferencing; real-time support from coordinating professors; distance teaching or learning tasks’ management. The paper might contribute to the development of new sets of methods, modes of operation, spaces and procedures for the research and learning alleged efforts to elaborate bachelor’s/master’s theses or even PhD theses.

Developing a Culture of Service Utilizing the Civil Society in Romania: Needs Assessment and Training Preparation for the Hospitality Industry

The theme we intend to research in this paper is the creation of a culture of services in Romania, understanding the hospitality management sector. The focus will be on the analysis of training initiatives within the hospitality industry in comparison with the hospitality industry in the western, more developed nations that benefit from significant data and studies already undertaken. There is a necessity to analyze the individuals who comprise this service sector, who they are, how do they behave, what motivates them, what results do they currently generate, and how can corporate training better equip and train them to achieve a higher, more western level of quality of service. Further, we plan to analyze and understand the current industry perspective along with its values, norms, and practices that can be improved through education. This would, in turn, improve the overall customer satisfaction, increase sales, and enhance the profitability and long-term sustainability of those companies that would excel in providing such superior service.

Romanian Hospitality Degree Graduates: Perceptions and Attitudes Among Industry Professionals

The customer experience is the lifeline of all hospitality providers and therefore requires special attention to the exact talent domains that are necessary for competitive existence in the highly fragmented marketplace. Robust training and continuing education are necessary elements to maintain employee readiness and competitiveness in most industries and business sectors. Understanding the most critical needs for operational improvement, aligned with the components that determine good and bad service, is critical touch point for hospitality managers.

Semiotics and the Entrepreneurial Creation’s Myths

In the context of the mutations occurring due to the development of a new transdisciplinary knowledge paradigm, sciences are increasingly concerned by the integration of rational approaches (knowing things) with the relational ones (knowing and understanding the world). In other words, sciences understood that the two perspectives are essentially complementary and not at all opposed.Such a dialog, between the entrepreneurial science and the creation’s myths, based on the rational–relational perspective of transdisciplinary knowledge, may constitute an important challenge for the academia, business in general and entrepreneurs in particular. For entrepreneurs, the exercise of escaping from the routine of the actions performed in a monodisciplinary framework, in order to reorient toward a pluri-disciplinary and multidisciplinary framework, jettisoned by the limitations of excessive specialization, can represent the chance of developing a new entrepreneurship style, marked both by rational and relational thought.The main purpose of the present paper is to argue based on the thesis that the condition of animation of the entrepreneurial creation (defined as the human need to transpose a business vision into a new built reality), obeys the universal laws of the creation of cosmos, under certain methodological dimensions, that gravitate around the notion of “entrepreneurial knowledge”.

The Twenty-First Century and the Expectations Placed upon Public Administration

The twenty-first century, still in its infancy, promises to be challenging and full of surprises. As we survey the world around us, east, west, north, or south, we see how governments, technology, multinational corporations, labor unions, the invisible capital markets, and the international governing agencies are reshaping the way we live, compete, and collaborate. These global macro-changes are especially affecting public administrators all over the world, as they are struggling to redefine and fulfill their responsibilities facing insurmountable challenges ranging from declining budgets, anemic economic growth, environmental pollution, the aging of their population, technology, free-market capitalism, unrestricted movement of labor, etc. How to survive and thrive in this new challenging era has been the topic of intense debate and research. The challenge is almost universal: governments must provide and enhance goods and services of a higher quality on diminishing budgets constrained by the global financial and economic crises (Davis, 2007).

The Business Civil Society and its Impact on Romanian Public Administration

The reform initiatives of the past two decades in Romania are praiseworthy, and the incontestable fact is that the state of the economy and the government is significantly better now than at the dawn of the 1989 Revolution. The Europeanization of the public administration is partially successful, especially in the capital city and a few other urban centers. There are a number of ongoing, successful public administration reform initiatives throughout the country, some of which I have outlined in previous chapters. This continuous work is vitally important and necessary to improve customer/citizen services, agency design, increase efficiency, and modernize the Romanian public administration. In the concluding chapter of this volume, I would like to attempt a modest theoretical contribution to the Romanian public administration reform dialogue, not from a traditionalist bureaucratic perspective but rather from a libertarian, free-market, somewhat postmodern public administration theory. My conceptual approach will be that current traditional public administration reform initiatives ought to be complemented by the revitalization of the civil society, individual responsibilities, and voluntary initiatives.

The Future of Public Administration Reform in Romania

The process of Europeanizing Romania is advanced and has had positive and visible results such as the growth in GDP per capita, the presence of multinational corporations, significant progress in infrastructure, and the development of public administration. In all fairness, even if there are shortcomings and aspects that require improvement, significant progress has been made on varying fronts. This Europeanization process, as analyzed in the previous chapters, has had a significant impact on the public administration of Romania. The legal framework is in place along with the Commissions’ monitoring reports verifying the progress of the nation and the adoption of the European public administrative space.

The Europeanization of Romania in the Globalization Context

The Romanian public administration space, the subject of this next chapter, is an active and dynamic player in the global debate of public administration reforms. The globalization forces that affect governance everywhere certainly have an impact in Romania as well. Over the last two decades, Romanian society has transitioned from a centrally planned, communist dictatorship with crumbling infrastructure and a stifled democracy to a newly integrated member of the European Union. Most political, economic, and administrative reforms that took place over this period were affected by these two monumental realities: the communist heritage and the European aspirations. As Romania’s interaction with globalization was filtered by these two realities, the dismantling of the old communist state and meeting the criteria for European integration became the palpable facets of globalization (Birzea, 2005a, 2005b; Crăciun, 2008; Crăciun & Collins, 2008a, 2008b; Hâncean, 2009a, 2009b).