Search

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new framework for assessing the innovation capacity and efficiency in Romanian small enterprises and start-ups. In this sense, a systematic literature review has been employed in order to obtain a clear understanding of the existing knowledge and to critically evaluate the existing solutions. In addition, considering the European Union objectives regarding innovation and sustainable development, this paper investigates the present situation of Romania by interpreting the official European Commission reports and current research papers. Considering the importance of regional innovation advancement and that of creating economic growth through competitiveness, this paper scrutinizes several concepts from the scientific literature, including regional innovation governance, entrepreneurship and innovation efficiency with the final purpose of developing a framework applicable for Romania. Taking into consideration the relatively low scores of Romanian regions regarding innovativeness and technological advancement, this paper attempts to provide a clearer understanding of the applicable factors that can be used for measuring innovation performance. The proposed framework focuses on the importance of entrepreneurship and the development of new business models in order to efficiently assess the innovative endeavors of enterprises. All things considered, this paper provides both theoretical and managerial contributions and possibility for further investigations addressed at specific Romanian regions and business sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of 2020, a virus originating from Wuhan, China, spread throughout the world, which in March of the same year was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. According to scientific studies and specialized publications, the pandemic had positive effects on the pharmaceutical industry and e-commerce, which accelerated the digitization process. The negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic consisted in the reduction of companies' revenues, the reduction of the number of customers, the reduction of investments and the temporary suspension of production. The research of this paper is descriptive, based on statistics and data from the official reports of the National Trade Register Office. The methods used are observation, analysis, data processing and synthesis. The aim is to identify the number of new investment sectors, newly established enterprises, companies that suspended their activity and those that entered insolvency in the period 2020 and 2021, compared to 2019. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on entrepreneurship in Romania was not devastating, the entrepreneurs keeping their confidence in the stability of the market. Thus, in 2020, the company establishment rate was affected, because new entrepreneurs no longer had the courage to invest their money, but the companies already present on the market were not strongly impacted. The year 2021 is the surprise year, being the most favorable for entrepreneurship in the period 2019-2021. The most companies were established, and the rate of suspension and insolvency was the lowest. The contribution in this paper consists in the fact that it is demonstrated that the pandemic did not destroy the entrepreneurial activity in Romania. On the contrary, there was a sector, Information and communications, which experienced rapid development, thus developing the concept of "knowledge economy" in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generation Z is a cohort of contrasts - youth growing with a life fuller of possibilities than ever before, but also into a world filled with challenges. Born between approximately the mid-1990s and 2010s, they are no longer children, but emerging as today and tomorrow's leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Studies have already revealed that this generation has a high affinity and strong abilities towards entrepreneurship. Digitally-savvy and with a global mindset, yet troubled by anxiety and inexperienced, Zoomers have a starting point which, depending on one's perspective, can be either troublesome or advantageous. The paper includes a review of the current state of research on the topic, followed by owned research examining how Zoomers position themselves in regards with entrepreneurship, ending with conclusions, observations, and recommendations. As both the authors either identify as, or teach, Generation Z ourselves, this topic holds professional, academic and personal dimensions. Youth is history in the making. Understanding, on a deeper level, the reasons and goals, the challenges and opportunities which make up Generation Z's professional ecosystem will ensure the best management of the economic force represented by Generation Z's entrepreneurial intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A startup can be categorized as a company with a business model that supports innovation and is also scalable. The growing importance of free enterprise and entrepreneurship as a driver of economic regeneration and progress has imprinted new characteristics on the obstacles that Romanian entrepreneurs face in terms of long-term development and competitiveness. This research aimed to investigate the importance of startup hubs for the business sectors, identifying the value it projects for startup owners. By conducting empirical research, the authors used mixed data collection to capture the complexity of the topic and to provide an objective context for the research. The analyzes carried out showed that from 151 questionnaires collected, 69.54% of the startup owners are interested in enrolling in a startup hub for guidance and counseling. The main constraint startup owner face concerns the financial aspect where 60% prefer to take loans from banks and 6.6% would consider accessing European funds. Even though 2 out of 3 startups are young, 64% believe their business is innovative, whereas 78.1% believe that business turnaround is a major benefit of using innovation in their business. The qualitative data revealed that in Romania startup hubs are considered a less-known concept, different from the ones overseas. Unanimously, all respondents stated that a startup hub must support newly formed startups and consider innovation as a driving force for economic growth. In conclusion, startup hubs should work closely with startup owners to ensure the success of both businesses. This paper manages to provide an in-depth analysis that should allow all parties involved to create a business environment that can support the Romanian economic sector, thus contributing to the existing research on the role of startup hubs and the way they can bridge the gap between a business idea and reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the status of economic education in Romania and its challenges, considering the circumstances in today's evolving world and horizon of expectations to which it is heading. Because of its many dimensions, education is essential, but challenging. In the generic sense, the school - as educational institution - becomes a fundamental institution having a strategic vocation to society. Economic education - coupled with education for change and development - acquires importance, increasing its importance in a country located in a continuous transition, leading to reshuffle the optical and economic behavior. Through its specific problems, economic education makes plea for training future consumers, employees and entrepreneurs in the spirit of free market economy. I tried to offer as far as possible, some openings in economic education research, targeting both the theoretical and methodological plan, as well as the strategic plan - operational, offering specialists and decision makers interested in possible courses of action they consider appropriate and current priority stage that crosses Romania. In relation to this objective, the analysis stressed the need for economic education and entrepreneurial needs manifested in all socio-professional categories. Finally we describe some directions and implications of economic and educational economist for initial and modern, in terms of personality adapting the Romanian society, focusing on traditional functions of university education and vocational training benefits continue. The paper concludes by proposing courses of action for improving economic education in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers a multi-perspective analysis of the entrepreneurial activity in rural Transylvania. Aggregated statistical data is used in order to create the "enterprise map" of the region and a cluster of top villages are identified based on their entrepreneurial density. I attempt to explain the identified regional differences using economic, geographic and socio-demographic factors. The modest explanatory power of the regression models and the significant disparity of entrepreneurial activity led us to the conclusion that in Transylvania the locality plays a major role in creating the social conditions for entrepreneurial development. For future research, I propose the elaboration of case studies on either village or micro-regional level, putting the emphasis on the analysis of the local social resources: configuration of social relations, models of economic cooperation, and local entrepreneurial culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Romanian B2B services market tends to be more and more mature, as new players enter the country as a consequence of Romania's membership within the European Union. Therefore, it becomes more and more difficult for new and small businesses to be set up and become functional players on this market. In this context, it is worthwhile performing marketing efforts from a special perspective that is a start-up marketing approach. The paper presents an analysis of start-up marketing as a discipline and also as practice in the B2B services market in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of governmental funding accompanied by an increase in the demand for social services have urged the universities to rethink their mission and their position on the market. The paper aims to investigate the dimensions of social impact of university entrepreneurship building on recent studies on the social mission of higher education. The existence of several dimensions in academia is tested by using a sample of twelve universities from Romania which rank first in terms of quality and academic results. A comparison is made between the ways in which the dimensions appear in the discourses of the universities to establish if the discourse is unaltered of variable. The examination reveals that the degree of social orientation differs among universities, some relying more on the activity of their student associations to promote social change, whereas others take the matters in their own hands and implement social projects based on European funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-national studies emphasized that female entrepreneurs have experienced a major decrease in income, and there was a decline in market demand as well. The pandemic crisis increased the workload of women, and mainly those who raise small children did not have much choice: they had to invest time and energy in the family. The success of the strategy that could be used during this period lays on the success of balancing the family-work conflict. The following research is based on an online questionnaire that collected responses and data between 2 April and 20 May 2020. Our questions focused on the situation caused by the pandemic, so that through this online survey we aimed to determine how women entrepreneurs in Transylvania coped with the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to get information regarding the financial reserves of the firms owned by female entrepreneurs, but also regarding the human resource reserves of these firms. We also aimed at learning if the pandemic period had an impact on the promoting and marketing practice of the firms and on their sale activities as well as whether there were any changes occurred due to the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For contemporary firms, strategic orientations are indispensable resources of successful internationalisation, perceived as a high potential performance ensuring strategy. The foremost strategic choices studied within the resource-based perspective are the entrepreneurial, market and learning orientations. Therefore, the study aims to assess performance allegations of the above strategic orientation trinity integrated within the international business framework. Potential individual and multiple effects included in the universal configuration research model were explored on a survey based quantitative data collected from a sample of Romanian SMEs. Investigation findings revealed the positive individual influence of foreign market and international learning orientations. Further results highlighted a greater positive explanatory power of the synergistic strategic orientation triad on the international success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debates on the differences between social enterprises and commercial enterprises are related to task performance and the way that social mission is accomplished by involved parties. However, commercial entrepreneurs must pursue both economic and social issues, but primary mission will be to acquire financial independence by investing and creating value for stakeholders. Corporate Social Responsibility has an undeniable effect on both society and businesses, but this practice depends on the companies availability to get involved which is at the discretion of the managers and shareholders. This study is based on a quantitative research, aimed to evaluate specific aspects of CSR policies developed by 79 firms from N-W part of Romania. Corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship have distinct conceptual approach, but both have an indubitable effect by valorizing social opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study on Student Attitudes to Entrepreneurship investigates the image which university students have of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. It is an initial exploratory/empirical study, which looks at the situation in Germany, Romania, Latvia, Italy and Austria. The study, based on questionnaires, shows that there are significant differences but also common features to the image of entrepreneurship and attitudes to it in the five countries. It is interesting to note that the students polled in connection with the study tended to have a neutral to positive/very positive image of entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]