HOW FUTURE MANAGERS VIEW SOCIETAL CULTURE: A CROSS-COUNTRY COMPARISON

Our study aims at enriching the existing literature about the prospective managers view of an ideal societal value system and the existing cultural practices in their society. The findings about the students' perception on cultural practices and their expectations about societal culture are helpful in imagining the societal culture in its dynamics. The research sample consists of 727 students in business and engineering on undergraduate and graduate levels from Romania and Slovenia. The reason we have chosen to compare Romanian sample with the cultural profile of the "average" future manager from Slovenia is the scientific curiosity of finding out if there are signs of cultural convergence of Romania with a previous communist country, and an older member of European Union. In doing so, our study will hopefully broaden the body of knowledge about the cultural convergence (or divergence?) between the former socialist countries joining European Union. The theoretical and methodological foundation is rooted in GLOBE international research project. Our findings revealed that at practices level,Romanians perceive significant higher Power Distance and significant lower mean value for Uncertainty Avoidance. At the expectations level, the Romanians and Slovenians are very similar in the desire concerning their societies orientation toward In group/Family Collectivism, Assertiveness and Performance Orientation, and record significant differenced in all the other societal values. The fact that for all the cultural expectations the future managers assign different mean values than for the correspondent practices make us expect that they will act to change their cultural environments. Still, the cultural orientation of Romanian future middle managers will differ in many regards from the Slovenian sample averages.societal culture, cultural practice, cultural value, Romania, Slovenia

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY VALUES: A CROSS COUNTRY COMPARISON

This empirical study aims at finding out how similar and/or different are the future Romanian and Slovenian managers in assessing the importance of organization's social responsibility values. The assumption of the research is that most of most of students in engineering and business will hold middle management position in the near future. The sample consists of 727 undergraduate and graduate students' levels from Romania and Slovenia, two former socialist countries. The data has been collected between 2008 and 2009 in the framework of GLOBE student project , using a section of GLOBE III questionnaire, about the importance of CSR related values in critical decisions. The findings concern the similarities and significant differences between: 1) whole Romanian and Slovenian samples; 2) Romanian and Slovenian students in engineering; 3) Romanian and Slovenian students in business. Our findings revealed a trend toward convergence in the importance given to decision's effect on contribution to the economic welfare of the nation and local community, as well as on employees' professional growth and development and on environment. The biggest difference between the groups concerns the decisions' effect on firm profitability (the Romanians considering this value as more important in critical decisions than the Slovenians). The students in engineering proved to be a more homogeneous group, showing convergence in assessing the importance of eight out of fifteen social responsibility values. The biggest difference concerns the decisions' effect on firm profitability (Romanians consider it as having higher importance in critical decisions than the Slovenians). Comparison of students in business revealed convergence in assessing the importance of employees' professional growth and development and decision's effect on environment. The biggest positive difference concerns the same value of decisions' effect on firm profitability. The Romanians are well behind Slovenians in realizing the importance of decisions' effect on relationships with important partners of the organization, ethical considerations and decision's effect on long term competitive ability of the organization.Social responsibility, Romania, Slovenia, students

TRENDS REGARDING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY IN ROMANIA

World economy is experiencing some important transformations, mainly due to the rapid evolution of the informational and communication technologies. In the last years, new technologies flooded the production processes. They have allowed the improvement of the processing and use of the economic information and the general accelaration of the economic flows. The technological revolution is presented in all its trade forms, either the wholesale trade or the retail trade. The technical progress interferes with the economic activity through the re-engineering of the production lines, the revolution in the field of building materials and store, shopping center, malls and industrial hall building, the considerably shorter time period these are being built and they become available for the commercial activity, the revolution in the field of supply, merchandise storage and manipulation, the appearance of different types of intelligent machineries and equipment, merchandise storage software improving the way the client is served at the counter. The industrial revolution determines a reorganization of the economic activity, a resetting of the trade economic activity by directing the trader towards the client using new commercial techniques and strategies.technology, technological revolution, technical progress, development, production, trade, improvement of the trade activity

Patterns of Risk in the Retail Business in Romania

The risk issue has become lately one of the most important themes in economic life. The risk is an important component of all management activities, whether it is a simple or more complex activity. There is a common opinion of those who study economics that the business risk is a natural thing, and it is irreplaceable in the business world. Risk disappearance creates confusion, inefficiency and generates the unnatural behaviour of the economic agents. Developing a business involves making decisions about the future. Information available to managers in making decisions is never perfect and complete. Considered one of the most dynamic economic sectors, trade is a deep restructuring process. The rapid rate of development in the economic activity has resulted in changes in trade activity, mainly in the retail sector, the new store formats of thousands of square feet generates a lot of turnover. The risks that appear in this sector, represented by large retail stores, are multiple: increased competition, technological development requiring replacement of hold capacity, insufficient information on the external elements of the enterprise, uncertain economic context, state intervention in the economy, environmental impact.risk management, retail business, technological innovations, competition, economic context

Multinational Corporations and Foreign Direct Investments in Romania. Effects on the Romanian Trade

This paper focuses on the study of transnational corporations and their business development through foreign direct investments made in other countries, mostly greenfield type countries. The objective of this paper is to determine the impact of these companies enlargement on the Romanian retail market, especially on the consumer goods market. Transnational companies have experienced a very dynamic economic growth, enjoying success at first in their country and then expanding to other countries. As independent players on the international market, multinational corporations are becoming more and more powerful every day. Most of these companies record annual sales of ten million dollars each. The most important aspect of business globalization is the interdependence between national economies. In this process, Foreign Direct Investments have an important role, given the fact that the internal resources are not enough to ensure the development and support of businesses hence the need to obtain external resources. Generally, FDI have a strong training effect both in the national and global economy, providing the replacement and modernization of techniques and technologies, increasing production and supply of goods, improving their quality and competitiveness, creating new jobs and growing the quality of life. Thus, each national economy is building its economic development strategy in which investments have a predominant role. Foreign Direct Investment is a major driver of globalization that characterizes the modern economy. Increasing of Foreign Direct Investment flows, accompanied by the increasing of the portfolio investments, highlights the major role played by transnational corporations, especially in developing economies and transition economies. The most important areas in which FDI was made in Romania are: financial intermediation and insurance, trade, construction and real estate, information technology and communication. The entering of retail networks on the Romanian market generated mutations in the forms of trade, causing modern trade, which by 2010 reached a market share of 50% of total trade.foreign investments, multinational corporations

Vital Approach to Transition: Slovene Multiple Case Study

This paper uses a multiple case study to suggest the effectiveness in application of an integrated model for the design of sustainable change strategies in high velocity environments and organizations. The model integrates awareness of current organizational cultural characteristics with leadership intent and strategy formation. The cultural analysis provides a lens through which diverse organizational values are exposed and stakeholders can assess organizational alignment with the external environment, organizational mission and future vision. Using the inherent differentiation of values as creative tensions, strategies are formulated for purposeful change to improve alignment. Leadership inquiry is used to suggest an alignment of personal intent with the strategic initiatives to project sustainable change. This Values, Inquiry, and Tensions Alignment for Leadership model (VITAL) is applied as an intervention sequence which provides information, direction, and motivation for sustainable change in transition organizations and environments.

TRENDS AND MARKETS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCTION AND TRADE WITH ROMANIAN PRODUCTS

The current stage of retail trade development in Romania still shows an important capacity to absorb, both of large outlets as well as of small outlets, which lately have disappeared from the market and they hardly cope with the superstore competition. A part of the market which has been yet insufficiently explored, with an important potential for development and which is represented by the stores selling traditional Romanian products, as well as the bio product stores, as long as these are made in Romania and are not imported. Also, the paper is trying to analyse the importance of this type of trade and its trends, its lacks and the possibilities of development.trade, retail trade, traditional products, bio products