The newest book of the EMBA community – Shaping the Future – a manifesto of the Romanian future business artisans is part of Transilvania Executive Education’ endeavour to offer an insightful perspective into the transformation of the Romanian business environment, outlining the emergence of a new generation of business leaders able to drive change in their organization and explore new possibilities and marketplaces. All the authors of this new volume published by Presa Universitară Clujeană are Executive MBA graduates of the University of Hull (UK), who studied in the program delivered in Romania between 2017 to 2020, and all the papers included in this book represent dissertations, that have been awarded a “Distinction”. The book is meant to inspire those willing to make changes in their organizations or develop a new business model but also shed light on the current development of the Romanian business environment.
The second section of the book, called People and Organizations, explores the changes that companies can make in creating more equitable and empowering working environments. In the first chapter of this section, Most Effective Strategies to Support Women Develop for Senior Leadership Roles - Olguța Totolici analyses how social values and gender norms specific to various societies and working environments can hamper or enable the accession of women in leadership positions. By assessing the working environment of Romanian companies and critically analysing the methods employed so far to map out discrimination at work, the author proposes a set of measures and frameworks of interpretation that companies can employ in order to ensure more equitable working environments.
In the ensuing paper, Relationship between Organization Culture and Leadership in Remote Saxon‐Latin Countries, Dan Bizubac looks at how the organizational culture and structure of a German company with offices in Romania is impacted and shaped by the millennial culture of its Romanian employees. Drawing on mixed-methods research, the author maps out the expectations and attitudes prevalent amongst the workforce in the Romanian offices and the convergence of these attitudes and expectations with the current management and leadership of the organization. He outlines how the leadership style is responsible for crafting a transparent and participative organization that responds to millennial expectations, and how the millennial workforce is simultaneously shaping the leadership model by asking for more transparency in communication and decision making, more flexibility, and achievement benefits that recognize and reward performance and commitment.
In the next paper, How Will the Millennials Shape the Labour Market? A Perspective of the Romanian Labour Market, Daniela Secară analyses how millennials shape the organizational structure and labour market by critically discussing the attitudes and expectations of the millennial workforce in Romania. Her research is based on qualitative data drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted with millennial employees and shows how millennials are actively changing the leadership models and organizational culture of Romanian companies by making demands for more security, guidance, and recognition. The millennial workforce is moving more rapidly towards the exploration of new possibilities and ways of expressing themselves within organizational structures, constantly pushing business and management models towards the edge.
In the next chapter, A Research on The Viability of a Consultancy Service Supporting the Preparation of Intellectual Capital Statements in Romania (As Perceived by Romanian Private Institutional Investors), Marius Moldovan explores how ready the market and the specialized workforce are in adopting a new service that audit firms could provide in an attempt of diversifying their portfolio of services and clients. The new product consists of business diagnosis services that help Romanian companies to raise finance by drawing up Intellectual Capital Statements. His findings unearth the fact that this is an emergent topic in the Romanian business environment and managers tend to have different and specific approaches to IC statements, depending on the size of the company and the specific of each industry.
In the last chapter of this section, Employer Branding as a Business Performance Driver, Doru Şupeală discusses employer branding. He shows how the evolution of the global market and the changes in value creation have led to the emergence of a new type of marketing – that practiced by employers in recruiting and retaining the best people with the best skills. He outlines how elements such as Purpose (Mission and Vision), Principles (Values, Behaviours, CSR initiatives), People (Brand’s Population), and Perks (Learning & Development, Health & Wellbeing, Work/Life Balance) are the most important parameters able to differentiate employer brands and contribute to the most attractive contemporary Employer Value Propositions. Working with Higgs’ (2004) labour market positioning matrix based on two dimensions - power of organizational culture and attractivity of total rewards he distinguishes between four categories of employers – Employer of Cash, Employer of Churn, Employer of Choice, and Employer of Values. The data resulting from this survey outlines how the expectations of employees in Romania align with the rest of the findings in Employer Branding research, confirming that people would like to work and belong to organizations that value and encourage autonomy, flexibility, and meaningful work, built on trust and authentic values, and led by managers who are able to guide and inspire through personal example and tailored advice and coaching.
This article represents a summary of the main ideas of each article from the second part of the book. For more details, please order the book here.
About the authors:
Dan is an experienced Management Consultant and Entrepreneur for Building Businesses and Challenging the Status Quo. With more than 12 years of experience, Dan has managed to earn trust, uncover key business drivers, and find common ground as a respected advisor in Management Consulting in different environments. In his professional experience, Dan has navigated through cultural challenges while jumping from time zones in the International Business environment in countries such as Germany, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, and Hungary to deliver exceptional and sophisticated business solutions. Wherever working with other Generations such as Baby Boomer, Gen X, or Millennial, Dan is adaptable and capable to figure out what makes teams tick, and how to transform individuals into top performers.
Dan has earned a Bachelor of Telecommunications Systems and Technologies in 2006 and a Bachelor of Constructions and Geodesy in 2014 and holds a Master Program in the field of E-Business (2013) and a Master of Signal and Image Processing studied in the French language (2013). He is a graduate from The University of Hull as part of the Executive Master of Business Administration (2019) delivered in Cluj-Napoca and he is also finishing his Ph.D. Program at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in the field of Industrial Engineering. He is fluent in English, French, German, and Romanian. Dan holds the Prince2 Foundation and ITIL Foundation Certificates.
Marius has held different management positions for most of his 10 years of experience in financial audits, accounting, and tax. These roles were carried out within the financial and medical services industries, as he has worked for strong and renowned brands such as “Deloitte” and “Regina Maria”.
His practical experience in the field of finance is backed by the most acknowledged certifications issued by reputable institutions such as the ACCA “Association of Chartered Certified Accountants” (UK) – member since 2014, the IIA “Institute of Internal Auditors” (USA) – Certified Internal Auditor since 2015, the CECCAR or the CAFR (RO). Marius graduated with “Distinction” from the University of Hull (UK) Executive MBA programme in 2017, which he attended by winning a full scholarship. His higher education track record also includes M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Business Management and Finance and Banks, respectively, issued by the Babes-Bolyai University from Cluj-Napoca. Marius is highly ambitious and competitive by nature; he is attracted to challenges and will always try and find the means and ways to improve himself and the people around him. His core values revolve around continuous learning, integrity and making an impact in people’s lives. On a more personal note, Marius’s interests are centered around family, sports, and reading.
Daniela has vast experience with a demonstrated history of working in the investment banking industry, being part of BT Capital Partners since 2006, where she has coordinated major capital markets transactions on the Romanian capital market: IPOs, as well as numerous bond issuances. Strong business development professional with an Executive MBA from The University of Hull, Daniela is since 2019 the CEO of BT Capital Partners.
Before joining the corporate life, she has been a professional basketball player within Universitatea Cluj-Napoca, team that won in 2003 second place in the Romanian national league. Basketball has offered her valuable lessons for the stages that followed in the corporate side, as such sports remain her passion and play a significant part in her life.
Doru is a Marketing and Business strategist and consultant, Managing Director at SPOR – Școala Pentru Oameni Responsabili (The School for Responsible People) and Head of Marketing at AirportLabs, a Research & Development IT company with its own products and a global market, in the aviation industry.
He has an MBA with Distinction from Hull University Business School, MA and BA in Marketing from Babeș-Bolyai University, and MA and BA in Communication Studies from Transylvania University Brașov. He is a Ph.D. candidate at Babeș-Bolyai University, writing a thesis on the management of creativity and innovation in disruptive organizations (” The characteristics of culture and climate in Eastern European companies delivering market-creating innovations”), and initiated the creativity experiments named ”Fabrica de Idei” (The Idea Factory) – sessions and camps.
Doru worked in top management positions in Marketing, Communication, and Procurement in several local and multinational companies, such as Selgros, IKEA, Betfair, Onyx Beacon, Ramada Brașov, or InNuts Fund. He also worked as a journalist and editing manager at ProTV, Radio Brașov, and MixMediaGroup, and as a communication consultant for Autoliv, the biggest global producer of safety automotives.
He published a book about technology-based marketing (“Experience Makes a Difference – Proximity Marketing for Millennials” - Libris Publishing House, 2017), an academic article about employer branding (”Inspire to hire and win the war for talents” - Marketing ID Journal – 2019 - DeGruyter, Berlin), and is currently writing “Employer Branding 100% - the practitioner’s handbook” – to be published soon. You can read his ”MarkeThink & More” blog articles on www.dorusupeala.ro.
Olguța is a high-achiever professional with a background in Legal and HR in the oil & energy industry, both in consultancy and operational management. She currently is Head of Data Protection Department in OMV Petrom as well as DPO for several companies of the group.
Olguța is experienced in leading change, developing legal and HR client-oriented services, leading large teams, and manage seven figures budgets. She is passionate about business strategy and helping people reach their potential. In her over sixteen years of professional experience, she set up newly created legal and HR departments, developed strategic approaches for her field of impact, optimized processes, and increased operations efficiency.
She is skilled in change management, labour law, HR processes, labour relations, litigation, negotiation, collective bargaining with trade unions, redundancy programs and now developing knowledge in personal data protection.
She graduated Law School from the University of Bucharest and Collège juridique franco-roumain d’études européennes of Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She completed her education with HR management and communication Masters, also holding a Ph.D. in Labour Law and an Executive MBA from the University of Hull.