I serve as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Babeș-Bolyai University. In 2019, I was a Fulbright RAF Scholar hosted by University of Rochester, Ain Center for Entrepreneurship. I hold a Ph. D. in Management from the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. I was awarded a postdoctoral scholarship from the University of Economics in Bucharest. I was a guest lecturer at various universities: Texas A&M University at San Antonio (USA), Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (Germany), Dongguk University (South Korea), Kajaani University of Applied Sciences (Finland), University of Economics in Katowice (Poland), and University of Maribor (Slovenia). I have published in a range of journals, including the Journal of Technology Transfer, Management Learning, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and Technology Analysis and Strategic Management.
My research interests focus on the areas of business strategy (including international strategies and strategic thinking and behaviour) and entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship education entrepreneurial intention and inclusive entrepreneurship).
The past decade has seen increased interest in entrepreneurship education outside business schools, driven both by changes in market demand and governmental policies. This has led to an expansion of embedded entrepreneurship education, where entrepreneurship is included as part of existing, non-business courses. Using the context-intervention-outcome-mechanism framework, we systematically review 33 cases of embedded entrepreneurship education programs to understand where, how, and with what outcomes such initiatives were implemented. Our analysis identifies four mechanisms, which explain how embedded entrepreneurship education functions: individual, team-based, organizational, and multi-organizational. Our analysis points to three key recommendations for embedded entrepreneurship education practice and three related avenues for future research: considering program scalability, intended outcomes and misaligned pedagogical models, and contextual diversity.
The link between strategy and performance is a well-established topic in the strategic management field, yet few studies have examined the role that corporate social responsibility (CSR) and customer orientation (CO) have on this relationship. Using a stakeholder theory perspective, the objective of this study is to explore these relationships in the context of a transition economy. A sample of Romanian firms was used and the data was tested using partial least square structural equation modelling. The empirical results present findings that while there is a significant relationship between strategic planning and CSR, a significant relationship was not found between strategic planning and performance, nor between strategic planning and CO. However, a partially mediated relationship was found between CSR, CO, and performance. The conclusion is that the embrace of free-market practices is still evolving in transition economies. The implication is that over time learning and accumulation of related knowledge will strengthen the interplay of these firm practices and result in improved performance.
Porter's generic strategies remain one of the most widely accepted typology of strategic options for businesses. Using a survey a sample of 69 hotel managers from the Nord-West part of Romania was questioned about their current strategic practices. A factor analysis revealed that hotels are pursuing only two strategies that can be identified as those of Porter. The regression analysis was used in order to test if there are certain practices that correlate with the strategies identified earlier in the study. The ANOVA results indicate between two and five strategic practices were significant for each of the four strategies. The results of the study are important as they support much of the literature and discussions about aligning strategic practices with the chosen strategy.
This paper analyzes factors influencing recognition of sustainable opportunities by using an augmented sustainability process model. The conceptual model used two main factors, Knowledge and Motivation, and one moderating variable, Social embeddedness. We investigated entrepreneurs from PVC joinery industry and concluded that while market orientation and sustainable entrepreneurial orientation definitely and positively influence sustainable opportunity recognition, others variables like knowledge of the natural/communal environment, awareness of sustainable development or focus on success have less support. Among all variables analyzed, perception of the threat of the natural/communal environment and altruism toward others have the poorest impact on opportunity recognition. Finally, we concluded that social embeddedness has a moderating effect on sustainable opportunity recognition, even though the results were mixed.
International audience
The topic of corporate governance is attracting substantial interest from scholars in a wide array of academic fields. Attention to governance can be found in departments of accounting, finance, management, organizational behavior, and
The current study investigates the relation between biological sex and gender role upon the choice of conflict management styles. The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) measured the gender role and Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II) Form C measured the conflict handling styles. Participants were employees of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The results found that biological sex has no correlation with the choice of conflict management style. On the other hand, the findings have shown that gender role is a predictor for the choice of conflict management styles as masculine individuals were highest on the dominating conflict style, whereas feminine individuals were highest on the avoiding style.
The article analyzes the performance measurement processes within the small medium-sized enterprises that run businesses in Romania's tourism sector. Related to contemporary approaches to improving business performance in the management literature, performance measurement approaches are analyzed using the balanced scorecard framework. Balanced scorecards proved to be a powerful tool that can inform the managers about the things that are working or not within a company, what is to be improved immediately and what may have another priority, the necessity for strategic management in managing internal business processes to drive innovation and learning. The article also proposes a balanced scorecard template for tourism agencies.
Boards’ involvement in the decision process has been reported in different ways in accordance with corporate governance theories. Several scholars postulates that both resource dependence and stakeholder theory emphasize board involvement in decision management through boards’ service roles; the legalistic perspective describes boards’ involvement in decision control through the execution of control roles; whereas stewardship theory reflects boards’ involvement in both decision management and decision control through boards’ strategic roles. Other theoreticians split the way in which boards get involved in the decision process into two phases and make comments on the contractual approach associated with agency theory, managerial theory, legalistic theory, stakeholder theory within which boards are known for their limited involvement and on strategic approach linked to stewardship theory and resource dependency theory which recognize the strategic role of boards. Unlike board’s control task which is grounded in the agency theory, the strategic task of boards is believed to have a multi-theoretic basis. The paper makes a comparative analysis of different corporate governance theories that are linked to the strategic role of boards.
Scholars have become interested in understanding what drives academics to pursue an entrepreneurial path, but less attention is paid to the individual-level factors that are considered the best predictors of entrepreneurial intentions among academics (AEI). Using a configurational approach, this study investigates the individual factors that influence AEI by confirming whether and under what conditions the antecedents can explain the outcomes. Fuzzy-set comparative qualitative analysis (fsQCA) was performed to identify the causal paths that influence AEI. The results reveal multiple configurations of conditions that influence AEI. The findings show that the attitude toward entrepreneurship is a core condition that explains high AEI. This effect is obtained when a positive attitude among academics is supported by having higher self-efficacy and a mastery goal orientation. In addition, academic status (i.e., job position, job experience) can play an important role in this equation. Also, motivational factors (i.e., performance goal orientation, performance avoidance goal orientation) can lead to low AEI. This is one of the first studies to apply a configurational approach in examining different causal paths to AEI in a developing-country context. This paper uses academic status, self-efficacy, goal orientation, attitude toward entrepreneurship, and academic output as conditions to identify multiple unique pathways that influence AEI.
This article presents data on the effect of professional attraction to entrepreneurship and the development of entrepreneurial intentions by university students using Covenant University in Nigeria as the case study. The study employed a descriptive quantitative research design by means of survey method. The population of the study comprised all students in the selected university with a total of 7988 students. A sample size of 400 students was selected. Reliability and validity measures were established. Data was analyzed employing Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Regression analysis was used as statistical tool of analysis. The analyzed field data set is presented in this article.
Entrepreneurial intention (EI) is a predictor of entrepreneurial behavior. In past years, it received significant attention due to the numerous advantages of entrepreneurial activities. The formation of EI within diverse international settings has been studied by researchers; however, the results of these studies are still inconclusive. Building on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study aims to shed light on how EI is created within three countries with different cultural, economic, and social backgrounds. Data was collected through a questionnaire completed by 413 business students enrolled in three universities in Germany, Romania, and Ukraine. Structural equation modeling analysis was used to examine the structure model of developing EI, and bootstrap confidence intervals were examined to test the mediating role, and multi-group analysis was used to identify differences among the three samples. Overall, the results reveal that both the attitude toward behavior (ATB) and the perceived behavior control (PBC) influence the EI of business students. These relationships were found to be significant in the three samples. ATB and PBC were identified as significant mediators of the relationship between social norms (SN) and EI in the overall sample. Within the subsamples, ATB was shown to have a mediation effect within the Ukrainian sample, whereas PBC was found to mediate the impact of SN on EI within the German and Ukrainian samples. The findings are discussed and both theoretical and practical implications are provided. JEL Clasification: L26, M13.
This article seeks to sustain the social entrepreneurial phenomenon by providing a theoretical and an empirical background of the way that a NPO can increase the level of efficiency and efficacy. Social entrepreneurship increasingly plays a major role in the progress of society in the same way that entrepreneurship promotes progress in the economy. Because NGOs are related to the social entrepreneurship phenomenon, our research was conducted into this type of organization, highlighting the case of „Ajutorul Familiei Fondation†an independent socially oriented organization that focuses on community development at the regional level in Cluj county, Romania. This article reviews a variety of academic and popular sources in social entrepreneurship, nonprofit and business management, as well as public policy.
The 21st century is a turbulent and paradoxically century that puts much emphasis on competitiveness, encouraging companies to come up with new and innovative ideas. A way of stimulating innovation within companies, essential for the survival of any company is by recognizing entrepreneurial activities within existing companies (intrapreneurship). The purpose of our study is to emphasize the importance of intrapreneurship for the survival of a company, given the current economical situation. According to Morris (2001), there is empirical evidence showing the impact of intrapreneurship on the performance of the company but there are not many studies that analyze the actual existence of intrapreneurship within the company. In this respect we conducted our study on the companies within the northwest region of Romania and tried to diagnose the intensity of intrapreneurship within the Romanian organizational environment.
This paper is a part of a series of projects of the authors, on the organisational trust, projects which were developed in various Romanian companies. In this research stage, we present part of the results of a sociologic survey, regarding the opinions of a group of 554 students in Economics and Business Administration on the level of trust in the organisations they own or are employed by. The paper presents the status of the survey companies, comparatively, on share source categories, but also compared to a pattern taken from the scientific specialty literature, which the authors developed and applied in a previous stage of the research. The objective of this approach is to obtain a global image of the level and results of organisational trust. The authors’ hypothesis are: 1) the highly critical attitude of the survey subjects, in order to obtain clear and truthful information and 2) the existence of significant differences between the Romanian share companies and the foreign share ones regarding the level and the results of organisational trust. These hypotheses are only partially checked and the conclusions are corroborated with the results of other projects, which were previously developed by the authors on the same topic.
Both the authors’ previous experience and the devoted literature highlight the particular role of teacher-student communication for the quality of graduates’ professional development and education. The research presented herein is based on a sociological survey conducted in a large university from north-west Romania, on more than 600 Economics Master’s students.The chief goal of our research is to determine efficient ways to improve the student training provided by the master programmes in Economics, by means of a better stimulation on the part of the teachers, a more efficient teacher – student communication, a better quality of the teaching materials employed and a greater relevance of the educational content for the particular area of specialisation pursued.After an initial review of the material resulted from the sociological survey, we continued to analyse the results in relation to the tiers of the communication process, the role of groups in the learning process and of the education process in the development of emotional intelligence.Within the current phase of our study, the underlying hypotheses are:(1) The training of Economics and Business Administration students provides them with opportunities of professional specialisation, while developing skills and abilities useful in everyday life.(2) The students’ training in Economics also entails an implicit educational process, which supports the development of their emotional intelligence.(3) Multiculturalism bears manifold benefits, both in terms of specialist professional training and on graduates’ attitudes and behaviour in the social life.This study allowed us to validate the hypotheses and to draw some interesting conclusions for the education of students enrolled in the university surveyed.
This articlepresentsdataontheeffectofprofessionalattractionto entrepreneurshipandthedevelopmentofentrepreneurialinten- tions byuniversitystudentsusingCovenantUniversityinNigeria as thecasestudy.Thestudyemployedadescriptivequantitative researchdesignbymeansofsurveymethod.Thepopulationofthe study comprisedallstudentsintheselecteduniversitywithatotal of 7988students.Asamplesizeof400studentswasselected. Reliabilityandvaliditymeasureswereestablished.Datawasana- lyzed employingStatisticalPackageforSocialSciences(SPSS). Regressionanalysiswasusedasstatisticaltoolofanalysis.The analyzed field datasetispresentedinthisarticle
