Our action is intended towards emphasizing some of the most important issues in Romanian research area, especially with reference to the technical and agricultural research and this because it is important to understand how our research area has evolved iresearch – development institutes, management of the research – development organizations, knowledge-based management

Cruceru Anca

Fotache Liviu Christian

English

Research Papers in Economics

214 
MANAGEMENT, KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE WITHIN THE ROMANIAN 
RESEARCH INSTITUTES FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS 
 
Fotache Liviu Christian  
Economical  Studies  Academy  of  Bucharest,  132  Brestei  Street,  Craiova, 
liviuchristian@yahoo.com, 0728297207 
Cruceru Anca  
Romanian-  American  University,  Faculty  of  Management-  Marketing,  1B  Expozitiei  Blvd, 
Bucharest, cruceruanca@yahoo.com, 0723508894 
 
Our action is intended towards emphasizing some of the most important issues in Romanian research area, 
especially with reference to the technical and agricultural research and this because it is important to 
understand how our research area has evolved in the past 20 years in order to know what has to be done in 
the present to achieve a reliable research industry in the coming future. Before reaching any benefit from 
our research system we should understand what drives the people involved and what makes it so difficult to 
manage and so important for the society.  
 
Keywords: research – development institutes, management of the research – development organizations, 
knowledge-based management 
 
JEL classification: D8, O3 
 
1. An objective “radiography” of the evolution of the organizations assigned to the research 
– development domain 
The research – development institutes have crossed a “golden period” at the end of the 60s and at 
the beginning of the 70s, simultaneously with the efforts made by the then form of government to 
obtain  a  certain  industrial,  and,  implicitly,  scientific  independence.  The  collaborations  with 
similar organizations from France, particularly, and also from the former USSR, and from the 
States,  in  spite  of  all  the  existing  bottlenecks,  have  allowed  the  birth  of  a  fecund  scientific 
environment. At a given moment, Romania even benefitted by a rather numerous and well trained 
researcher group and by the necessary resources, and pretty surprisingly, Romania also benefited 
by at least an extensive material support, although not directly related to the latest technologies. 
The Romania of 1990 found meant research institutes for almost all the industrial domains, to be 
located in the most important towns of the country, research institutes to be organized around the 
universities from Bucharest, Iasi, Cluj, Timisoara, Sibiu, Constanta, Craiova, to name only some. 
The attraction and pressure forces from the free market instantaneously  made their presence 
obvious  in  the  research  –  development  domain,  as  well,  “knocking  down”  a  domain  with  a 
practically inexistent “immunity” system. The management of the vast research – development 
domain was not oriented either towards increase, or towards survival. 
“The wave” of request and offer struck, at the peak of its force, like a cold shower, the system, 
which  resulted  in  the  decrease  of  the  management  of  this  one  to  the  level  of  reality;  the 
mentioned cold shower included: 
- the migration of the experienced technical personnel reached very high levels; 
- for the great majority of the ones who chose to remain in Romania, the excessive politicizing of 
the institutes that were still under the state’s subordination made it rather impossible for them to 
have access to high positions that would thus motivate their real implication; 
- the fundamental research remained, to a great extent, the responsibility of  “idealists” who have 
not had the capacity to cross beyond  the theoretical discovery and proceed with patenting and 
putting  to  good  value  their  ideas,  not  to  mention  that  the  bureaucratic,  development  and 
capitalization body was, mostly, made up of less adequately educated persons who has no interest 
or attraction to that domain, or who were simply unfit. 215 
Unfortunately, this was not the only bottleneck the national research – development system was 
faced with after the 90s. During the first year after the revolution, the research institutes remained 
in the state’s patrimony, and the allocated budget for this domain was scarce for years on end, 
sometimes  just  covering  the  disproportionately  small  salaries  if  related  to  the  Romanian 
researchers’ high education and professional qualities, and also some maintenance expenses, as 
well. The investments in new equipment and modern research techniques were quasi inexistent. 
Needless to say that, at the end of the 90s, the Romanian research institutes’ material foundation 
was obsolete from the technological point of view.  
However, this is not the end of the problems that the national research system was faced with, at 
least not yet. The initiation of the privatization process represented only to a small extent the re-
launching of an organization as a research institute.  
As  concerns  the  years that  have  passed between the  former  form  of  government  and  to the 
present date, it is much to our regret that we can list here only few positive aspects. Nevertheless, 
the location of the institutes next to university centers helped the institutes acquire qualified 
youngsters who would thus become future researchers. 
In spite of an obsolete material foundation, in spite of less educated researchers, in spite of 
having  an  extremely  precarious  position  on  the  European  and  international  research  – 
development market, the research institutes from Romania still try not to recover the former 
famous status, but to survive in a rather difficult context. 
 
2. Assessments on the management applied by the research – development organizations. 
Consequences of this management 
 Thus, it is more than obvious that, based on the above “picture”, we shall not be able to assume 
that the research-related management could be called “a success”. Although it was not the same 
policy  that  was  applied  to  the  management  of  all  the  institutes,  there  are  outstanding  joint 
characteristics and we consider that it might be interesting to have a look both at the management 
decisions and also at the market pressures. 
Plus and minus approaches related to the research – development management of the Romanian 
institutes 
The  management  officers  of  the  research  institutes  have  proven  little  interest  in  a  careful 
administration of the resources they benefited by. We do not refer here mainly to the tangible 
patrimony  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  poor  administration  of  this  one  has  not  allowed  a 
capitalization of the patrimony to be consistent with the potential, not to mention that it has also 
triggered  an  overwhelming  increase  of  the  additional  expenses,  as  well.  The  overhead  and 
maintenance expenses of the physical patrimony have become disproportionate if related to the 
number of active researchers and to the volume of the continuously decreasing purely scientific 
activities. 
The  applied  management  has ignored the  possibility  to externalize  the  dedicated  activities  – 
accounting, legal, maintenance, while the bureaucratic unit kept the same positions in parallel 
with a dramatic decrease of the researchers’ number. The institutes preserved a wide range of 
activities, besides the administrative ones, while putting into practice an inefficient technique to 
assign the resources to too many domains.  
The insufficient funds have hindered the institutes from participating in the main scientific events 
to be organized all over Europe, have hindered the institutes from benefiting by the computer-
based information process, from setting contacts and initiating partnerships; needless to say that it 
was  such  partnerships  that  would  have  benefited  by  the  expertise  and  knowledge  of  the 
Romanian researchers. 
Previous  to  the  2000s,  the  research  institutes  have  nor  managed  to  develop  a  knowledge 
marketing policy as the so-called “brain export” process has not brought back to the institute any 
kind of value. Such a situation should be also understood from the point of view of the fact that 
before the “90s the institutes did not have to deploy any effort in view of the capitalization, on 216 
the dedicated market, of the research results as these ones were included in a centralized material 
at the economic units from Romania or from the former Soviet block. 
This way, for more than 15 years, the Romanian research activity, the owner of an impressive 
range of innovative technical solutions out of which some have already been patented at the 
national and international levels, allowed “dust” and time to cover them, and even worse than 
this, some of these solutions significantly lost some of their assigned value when the initiative 
arose to launch them on the market. 
It is to a great extent that the management of these organizations was based on financing from the 
state budget, which led to a reduced interest towards marketing and towards development by 
means of a project-based management.  
The  valuation  of  the  attitude  towards  the  organization,  towards  its  values  and  towards  the 
environment  in  which  the  organization  operated  is  absolutely  necessary  to  be  able  to  better 
understand the extent to which the research – development environment from Romania shall be 
able to meet the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for the period between 2008 and 
2013. 
 
3. Analysis of the major involved aspects 
Major aspects of the research – development domain: 
- the dedicated personnel and the related knowledge make up the most important resource of the 
organization that operates in the research – development domain; 
- the research activity at the European level develops, to the greatest extent, further to the support 
provided  by  national  and  European  research  programs,  thus  setting  up  the  knowledge  and 
partnership networks; 
-  the  specific  nature  of the  research  –  development  domain  and  of the scientific  knowledge 
market imposes the use of state of the art technologies, the updating of the endowment, of the 
work technologies and of the managerial methods; 
- the active attendance at the domain-related events organized on a regular basis at the European 
and international levels is a compulsory condition. 
These four aspects stand for the main columns of the research – development domain; they are 
the axes around which the research – development domain develops. It shall take huge efforts, 
really much time and determination to be able to go beyond this handicap that has not been 
inherited, but that has been induced by indifference, by the lack of initiative and by the incapacity 
to understand the depth of this domain and the seriousness of the actors who perform in this 
context. 
However, we take into account another aspect, that has brought its major contribution to the 
present situation. The stakeholders’ priorities have been either neglected, or exacerbated, and the 
passage from one extreme position to the other was obvious. Our intention is to point to the fact 
that the stakeholders’ carelessness has led to serious lack of balance for the system since the 
system balance is granted by the very correlation between, on the one hand, their interests, and, 
on the other hand, the requests placed by the market and the pressures made by the domain 
market. 
 
4. Proposals to improve the management of the research – development organizations 
To be able to be successfully involved as active actors on the European research – development 
market, the organizations shall have to apply a management that is based on knowledge that is 
real, adaptable and flexible and depends on signals from the environment. 
The specialization of the activities seems to be now more necessary than ever, and we do not 
refer here exclusively to the scientific, research activities. The specialization of the bureaucratic, 
financial – accounting and legal activities is compulsory to be able to integrate the organizations 
into the pan-European research networks / consortiums. It is already common knowledge for 217 
everybody that the European financing, in general, and the European financing for the research – 
development domain have become the subject matter of an excessive bureaucratic pressure. 
It is our deep wish to make an inventory, for the pages to come, with a brief list of the obvious 
measures that should be taken in view of turning the management of the research – development 
organizations into an efficient one: 
1. to render efficient the management of the bureaucratic processes: 
- to set up a legal department that is specialized in making-up the documentation that is related to 
the  projects  with  European  or  national  financing  /  to  hire  a  consultancy  company  that  is 
specialized in the administration of the bureaucratic processes (to check contracts, to organize 
public tenders – procedures, etc); 
- to set up a financial – accounting department that would take over the correct and efficient 
administration of the cash inputs and outputs that have been generated by the project all through 
its implementation (the existence of such a department is justified in case of those organizations 
that simultaneously participate in several projects, where the activity volume is high, and the 
projects share multiple similar characteristics) / to hire a consultancy company that is specialized 
in the administration of the bureaucratic processes (to check contracts, to organize public tenders 
– procedures, etc); 
- to standardize the bureaucratic modules within the projects, including aspects related to the 
organization and launching of public tenders, press releases and publicity, non-scientific reports, 
presented in quasi similar forms, easy to adapt and that are replicable; 
2. to specialize, at the highest possible level, the developed scientific activities – the outsourcing 
of  the  non-specific  activities  shall  be  completed  simultaneously  with  an  increase,  to  the 
maximum, of the personnel specialization level and with the improvement of the methods to 
acquire information that has value and knowledge potential; 
3. to direct the research – development activities to the market requests.  The research, and 
particularly the industrial research, shall give proof of realism and pragmatism as concerns the 
applied approach methods, and we must understand that, pretty often, a product that cannot be 
sold is a product that lacks importance, at least for the time being, at least with reference to the 
environment we are living in; 
4. to organize valuation campaigns in order to decide which are the traditional clients’ needs, and 
to understand the level of satisfaction of these ones; 
5.  to  implement  market  study  programs  that  would render  obvious  the  requests,  needs,  new 
standards  and  expectations  the  dedicated  market  has  so  that  the  research  –  development 
organizations be able to set their targets, and even try to provide, in due time, the solutions that 
would be adequate to the innovation requests, to the research and development requests for new 
products and services.  
Nevertheless one of the most important decisions that should be taken in order to really improve 
research  is  to  decrease  the  bureaucratic  dimension  of  the  Framework  Program  that  sustains 
research all over the European Union. It is a very important and difficult task but it definitely is a 
must if research and researchers are to be considered a reliable economical driving force.  
 
Bibliography: 
1.  Ovidiu  Nicolescu,  Luminita  Nicolescu  –  “Economia,  firma  si  managementul  bazate  pe 
cunostinte”, Ed. Economica, Bucuresti, 2005 
2. Donald Hislop – “Knowledge Management in Organizations. A Critical Introduction”, Oxford 
University Press, United States, 2005 
3. http://www.mct-excelenta.ro 
4. http://www.ist-world.org 
   

Knowledge Management in Organizations. A Critical Introduction”,

Luminita Nicolescu – “Economia, firma si managementul bazate pe cunostinte”,

MANAGEMENT, KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE WITHIN THE ROMANIAN RESEARCH INSTITUTES FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS

http://steconomice.uoradea.ro/anale/volume/2009/v4-management-and-marketing/34.pdf

MANAGEMENT, KNOWLEDGE AND VALUE WITHIN THE ROMANIAN RESEARCH INSTITUTES FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS

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