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Educational objectives, like educational quality, are contextual and evolving--they may exhibit both continuity and change. This paper capitalizes on the role of neo-institutionalism and on the contribution of Douglass North (one major representative of the neo-institutionalism trend) in identifying the institutional impact upon cognitive development, national consciousness and economic performance. Out of this large theoretical corpus, we have focused on the theories of learning. The core idea which we have drawn on refers to the fact that educational improvements are dependent on the characteristics of social institutions and institutions, in their turn, are variables dependent on the level of education. Is this a vicious or virtuous circle? If political factors considered both formal and informal aspects in the implementation of educational reforms in Romania, this would increase the chances for progress. Any strong educational "edifice" needs to start from national values and beliefs. The impending changes should be gradual rather than radical. The importing of patterns from developed countries should take place cautiously. Quality assurance is one of the most important parts in restructuring the national educational system that not have a Romanian label. Yet, the interest related to the theory and practice of quality management in education has echoed in Romania as well. A recommended goal is to identify that organization chart and synchronization of efforts so as to determine people to respond to their tasks enthusiastically and constantly improve their problem solving strategies. A "quality culture" will entirely depend on this mechanism, on the framework of constraints and incentives under which individuals interact. Consequently, our approach stresses the idea that a "quality culture" needs to derive from the Romanian context and this could be possible only by many successive, long-term institutional changes. Once such conditions are met, the passage from quality to sustainability becomes shorter and obstacle free, as a quality culture is likely to develop responsible attitudes to community and the environment.

Starting from the results of a national survey, a questionnaire on the values of Romanians was applied in April 2008 which was used for a comparative analysis of historical regions of Romania: Moldova, Bucharest, Dobrogea, Transilvania and Muntenia. Ou

The paper aims at investigating the two main characteristics of a modern system of compulsory education with a focus on Romania. It assumes that the equity of the education sector and the efficiency of resource use are strongly correlated, both supporting

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Economists generally consider efficiency to be the equivalent of either maximizing the results of existing resources or minimizing resource consumption in order to achieve a set objective. Although apparently simple, the efficiency concept raises difficulties, either applied at an individual or at a social level. The present paper is a theoretical one, aimed at conceptual reevaluation, and it comprises three sections. In the first section we have presented the economic efficiency concept having as a point of departure the Pareto optimal and its main reviews. The second section is focused on the difficulties raised by the efficiency concept viewed mainly from the Austrian School's perspective. In the third section we aim to investigate the methodological perspectives of economics as a science, on the one hand and of state intervention, on the other. The most important conclusion of the present paper is that efficiency can not substitute to ethics but, on the contrary, ethics represents the ultimate criterion for efficiency judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our intention into this paper is to reveal that the vision of Constantin Noica about the language is opened for other philosophical points of view. The idea that we want to emphasize in this paper is that the languages games studied by Wittgenstein may belong to the hermeneutics. Throw this idea we want to argue the possibility that the languages games can also be found in the Romanian philosophy, here the Romanian philosopher Constantin Noica approaches in his studies to the hermeneutics domain and also to the languages games analyzed by Wittgenstein. Some reviews to the works of Noica allowed us to conclude that the analysis achieved by the philosopher in the paper, the Creation and beautiful in the Romanian utterance (1973) resembles to the languages games developed by Wittgenstein in the paper The blue book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

When adopting the recommendations of the Lisbon Agenda or Strategy, the European states have decided that in order to make the European Union a space of competitiveness and greater social cohesion and a model of sustainable economic growth, research-development and innovation (RDI) must become the main pillar of the member states common policies. Consequently, the European Council recommended more investment in research and development, setting the collective EU target of raising research investment to 3% of the GDP, namely 1% from public funds and 2% from private sector. The current economic and financial crisis and the pressure it poses on resources, public or private, ]has limited to some extent the achievement of these objectives. The investments might not increase as anticipated or they might even decrease. However, several states have understood that, in times of crisis, the investment in research and innovation might bring tremendous gains in terms of new technologies, human capital and knowledge or, in other words, gains in economic competitiveness. This paper aims at providing a comparative analysis of the Romanian situation using the statistical indicators of the knowledge economy, those related to RDI financing and also to RDI results for the short period of time when financing has increased as a result of applying the objectives set out by the Lisbon Strategy. We underline the fact that without financing there is no research and innovation and without policies to support RDI the delays in development cannot be recovered. The final part of the paper provides several recommendations aiming at improving the RDI policies in Romania in accordance with post-2010 Lisbon Strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]