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In the context when tourism has become a widespread phenomenon, there are many global concerns in this regard, with reference to the plans to protect the world's cultural and natural assets, and to stimulate the sustainable development of this sector. Touristic, cultural and scientific bodies develop comprehensive strategies, initiating Conventions, drawing up plans and periodically preparing reports. Romania has a large number of tourist attractions, ranking 46th in the top based on this criterion, distinguishing itself also grace to the attractiveness of natural objectives, the total number of protected areas, the number of cultural objectives and the number of objectives in terms of oral and intangible heritage. Taking into account all these indicators, Romania may be proud of a vast touristic potential, which offers wonderful premises for starting a business in tourism, for the expansion of entrepreneurship and for the development of natural, cultural and anthropic resources. Each region and area of Romania has diverse and special particularities and characteristics, and we have to underscore their ability to become true business poles grace to the high level of their attractiveness, being capably of developing actual hospitality industries. The recognition of their existence and value obviously contributes to a very large extent to the promotion and inclusion of cultural objectives into various global rankings, actions that lead to an increased interest among tourists, and implicitly contribute to attracting a large number of visitors and generally have a significant media impact. In this respect, this paper highlights international and domestic coordinates related to the sizing and capitalization of tourism potential, analysing theoretical coordinates and statistical data. In addition, we also forward the results of a survey carried out in order to identify the prospects for capitalizing on the Romanian tourist heritage and the manner in which the highlighting of the Romanian touristic and cultural objectives can be a starting point for generating prosperous future business and can develop the business milieu in all areas, including in the regions experiencing a steep decline, like Caraş-Severin county. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An indicator for a nation's and its people's wealth is provided by the dimensions of its middle-class. As SMEs constitute the spinal bone of the modern economic system, this paper's purpose is to present the development of the Romanian SMEs throughout the 20th Century: from the flourishing times before the Second World War, during the darkness and gloominess of the communist ruling, to the times of change and transition, respectively to today's world economic crisis. The main purpose of this analysis is to try to aim at pointing out the links established among a friendly political environment, a healthy economic system, a set of strong and clear ethic values of the managers and the well-being of the people. It becomes clear that there can be identified a strong connection between the willingness of managers and entrepreneurs to assume responsibilities and the dimension of private property. The main assumption of this paper is that the half-century of communist ruling has managed to sweep away the sense of responsibility that is driven by private proprietorship and which is essential for the development of the business environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to our knowledge there has been limited research conducted in Romania with respect to tourism entrepreneurship. Due to the fact that entrepreneurship can be considered an engine for economic progress and that tourism is an economic activity that efficiently creates jobs in regions lacking important development opportunities, we undertook an exploratory investigation of entrepreneurs from Straja mountain resort. Our research concentrated on identification of the socio-economic background of tourism entrepreneurs, the factors underlying their decision to become an entrepreneur, in general, and that to become an entrepreneur in tourism, in particular. Also, the paper investigates the influence of entrepreneurs' socio-demographic characteristics on the motivations to become an entrepreneur and respectively, to invest in tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper surveys the dynamics of the foreign investments in Romania. The main difficulty here is to identify the comparative and credible data, endorsed by the journals of some responsible institutions in the field, as well. According to the UNCTAB latest reports, in the recent years, Romania has become the second best destination for foreign investments - after Poland - in Central and South-Eastern Europe (Turkey was left aside). The dynamics of the foreign investments, analyzed on the basis of the data offered by the monthly Syntheses of the National Office for Trade Register, is shown by the variograms performed on a monthly-, quarterly-, and yearly-basis, respectively, between January 2004 and October 2009. The spectacular increase of the foreign investments is obvious following Romania's accession to NATO (2004) and its integration into EU (2007). Between 2007 and 2009, the most important investors came from Germany, followed by those from the Netherlands, Austria, Czech Republic, France, and Switzerland. With the penetration of the great foreign companies and the increase of the autochthonous entrepreneurial spirit, the foreign investments from the Near and Middle East have diminished - the greatest majority of the existing ones focus on whole sales and retail trade. However, because of the indecisive dynamics of the world economy, we cannot extrapolate future developments of the dynamics of the foreign investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on two different topics that apparently do not seem to be linked: city branding and the perception of public administration services. The authors intend to briefly sketch the framework of the manner how public administration institutions can get involved in researching how citizens and private entrepreneurs perceive the services provided by the local authorities of the Municipality of Cluj-Napoca, how the image of these services influences the perception of the city, and how public administration servants can contribute to the development of the city's brand. We have chosen to focus on Cluj-Napoca, as it is one of the most important cities of Romania, which has also enjoyed a spectacular economic development throughout the past decade. A question may be raised: Is there a linkage between the manner how local public administration institutions are perceived and the way how citizens regard the city from the perspective of branding? We are interested to identify how public services interfere with the branding of a city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All over the world, large corporations are forced to resize their structures, to redesign their strategies in order to face accelerated competition and to survive in a highly unstable environment. In the same time, the rapid changes become important sources of opportunities leading to an increase of start-up companies, strengthening SMSs' image of main job creator in the economy. In this dynamic context, entrepreneurial education and training has a major role in achieving desired behavioural outcomes, especially in terms of reinforcing ability to respond to different situations, based on creativity, innovation, autonomy, self-direction and self-expression. As stated in the Final Report regarding promotion of SMEs competitiveness: "at higher education level, the primary purpose of entrepreneurship education should be to develop entrepreneurial capacities and mindsets" (European Commission, 2008, p.7). As pointed out by specialists: "today's graduate value is in the ability to manage and apply knowledge in action and in an entrepreneurial context, and not only in the ability to acquire and assimilate knowledge" (Collins & all, 2004, p.454). This paper advocates the role and importance of cooperation between higher education institutions (HEI) and SMSs sector, its potential to stimulate entrepreneurial mindsets among students. It is an empirical contribution that seeks to link entrepreneurial education within HEI with the SMEs sector, to analyze the reciprocal benefits of cooperation between both parties. A comprehensive literature review and a structured evaluation of current knowledge on this topic are carried out. Appropriate forms of cooperation and their effectiveness are also pointed out. Main challenges for the Romanian higher education system and ways to incorporate appropriate forms of cooperation with SMSs are highlighted, in order to transform entrepreneurial education into a major source of graduates that are job creators not job "hunters", as an indispensable condition to strengthen SMSs sector and Romania's market based economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of the development of the Romanian agro-food SMEs sector becomes a more and more important market feature for our country. Our research main purpose would be to investigate and analyze the role to be played by the Romanian SMEs in the agribusiness as an important factor that can generate and increase the development of the Romanian rural areas. On this path, we are going to study the present state of the Romanian agricultural sector and also the way in which we could stimulate the development of the SMEs in this sector as one of the most important triggers for growth of the rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]