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How to Use Ancient War Strategies in Modern Business
“Marketplace is a battlefield” – a commonly used Chinese proverb, applicable today more than ever. As cross-cultural business consultants, we believe in strategy and clarity above all else, and who else to learn from if not Sun Tzu himself – the Chinese military tactician influencing strategic decision-making today despite having lived long before the formation of the PRC or the emergence of capitalism. Yet he claimed that the best battles are won without drawing swords. More
Commercial Reflections for a Centennial Romania: Trading Abroad Adds to the Prosperity of a Nation, Albeit National Prosperity Shall Never Be Tradable
In the history of a nation, its commercial relations with neighbouring countries or with those over the seas matter a great deal. Someone once said that, across centuries, the most common ways of interrelating between people were war and trade. Both activities have many advantages but also significant costs. History has shown that in the case of trade, the balance is tilted towards its benefits. Although they also participated in armed conflicts, most often against their will, the Romanians contributed to the history of Europe and the world especially by participating in cross-border trade. Who were their ancestors and what did they do? Who are their contemporaries, and most importantly what must they do? The answers to these questions rest on today’s youth, who are obliged to flesh them out and to better understand their past in order to become the main actors to bring about a positive change in the Romanian society. It is the authors’ hope that the work presented in article is going to contribute to the process of dealing with the various facets of the historical development of this nation, which has done well in the past and should take great pride in itself. More
Romania’s Anti-Communist Straussianism
The decision of the Bucharest Court of Justice on Friday, September 20th 2019, to uphold the verdict issued in May by the National Council for the Study of the Archives of the “Securitate” (CNSAS) regarding former President Traian Băsescu’s collaboration with the Communist regime’s secret police has been received with a sense of avenged satisfaction on the part of his long-time critics and adversaries. This was doubled by a feeling of avowed surprise on the part of his most loyal and ardent supporters. Neither of these opposite attitudes is however justified by a careful analysis of the country's recent politics. More
The COVID Crisis and the 2nd Pillar of the Romanian Pension System
Far from the public attention, the value of the assets held in the seven private funds that manage the pension money in Pillar II for seven and a half million future pensioners decreased dramatically in the second part of February and continued to decline during March, with the minimum being reached on the 18th of March 2020. More
Centuries of “Concrete”-Solid Discoveries of the Humankind: From Building the Roman Empire Towards Contemporary Buildings
Have you ever questioned what lies at the basis of the so-called highly-developed cities, at the foundation of the tallest buildings worldwide or how the infrastructure came to life? The answer is directed towards… concrete. It built the modern world step by step. The rock-solid history of the material we all know today was embodied in mystery since it is not known where it started or who exactly came up with the brilliant idea behind it. Various empires presided over an immense contribution towards finding the perfect recipe for building the concrete structures which remain a complex enigma for the architects or engineers today. The grey building slabs are considered to be a source of inspiration for many of the bricklayers in history that contributed with numerous attempts to discover the utopian recipes that the Romans for the specific built landscapes that characterized their empire. Currently, almost everything around us that is “tangible” and “real”, from the sidewalks to the bridges, are reliant on concrete. But very few of us acknowledge that. We might take it for granted, but this mixture comprises much of the constructed environment of modern civilization. More
The Effects of the Coronavirus on the Labor Markets in the EU
Romania was among the least affected EU Member States in Q2 2020 in terms of temporary layoffs, reduced working hours or job losses, according to the analysis published by Eurostat. The consequences of Covid19 pandemic varied significantly from one country to another, the most affected being Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Ireland and Greece. More
The Matter of Persia: Discerning Meaning from Strife and Unrest
The year 2018 began with a renewal of some of last year’s main geopolitical clashes, the most prominent being the nuclear threats exchanged between North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump, China’s President Xi Jinping delivering grim speeches to his army, urging troops to be ready for war, and analysts offering generally gloomy forecasts for this year. One other significant event that has erupted near the end of 2017 were the unexpected and violent protests in Iran that have continued up to at least the first week of 2018, with mass demonstrations held both for and against the country’s current government and an uncompromising crackdown by Iranian police. More
Amfiteatru Economic, the Measure of Lastingness
I started writing about economics and economy in the “big press”, both academic and mass-media, around the same time, somewhere in 2002. This, after having explored journalism during the university studies. I had understood the difference in the literary species between an article dedicated to the mass-media field and one published in academic journals, long before the biblio- and sciento-metric tsunami reached Romania, with its (inter)national indexations and citations of the scientific publications. More
What Does Brexit Reveal About Government Responsibility?
In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, Andrei Sandu relayed his observations on the emotional rift between the ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ voters. He noted how many citizens defined ‘leave vs. remain’ as ‘change vs. an unhappy status quo’. The government tried to push for unity, but it was clear that the UK had by then become a “fractured country”. More
Diaspora, in Theory and at Crossroads
Although it has been a developing field for some time, Diaspora Studies is a discipline which has remained unapproached at the academic level in our country. As the ‘diaspora’ has been more frequently mentioned in the media, in political debates and by the common people, it is necessary to understand the various aspects of the concept along with other connected ones. My two books, “Transnational Networks, Identities and Homes: South Asian Diasporic Women in Fiction and Film” (2017a) and “‘Love’ and ‘sisterhood’ in the Identities of Women in Novels by Writers of the South Asian Diaspora” (2017b), include several theories and large analyses on diaspora(s) and ‘home(s)’ (in the plural). More
The Curious Case of the Romanian Yield Curve
The single biggest evidence in favour of a recession looming on the horizon, which is on the lips of every single pundit in advanced economies at present, is an atypical relationship between the yields of government bonds of different maturities, called the inversion of the curve. Short term government borrowing has become more expensive than long term government borrowing, which goes against basic tenets of economic theory such as time preference. This atypical relationship between long term and short term maturities is thought to predict a recession, because the only reason why borrowing would become more expensive in the short run than in the long run seems to be a flight on the part of creditors to safe, highly liquid and easy to exchange assets, which pushes up demand for the near-end of the curve, and a pessimistic growth outlook for the future, which pushes down demand for the far end of the curve. In the United States, the model-economy in this regard, the inversion of the curve has so far predicted every recession in the last decades. More
Smith, Hayek and the Virus: Entrepreneurial Responses in Times of Crisis
The world is struggling with despair in the face of an uncaring threat at the moment of writing these ideas: that word is not even worth mentioning any longer, since it is probably on the lips (and in the ears) of the majority of people worldwide. ‘Probably’ and ‘majority’ are only used here in order to respect a certain journalistic demeanor in writing which requires some precautionary – thus, not categorical – statements. Indeed, some children might not truly understand what goes on during the present time; so might some minority of people living in any given disconnected and remote settlement (if such disconnection still exists) and, unfortunately, so does some whimsical category of people – even grown-ups – who, although they have heard about the danger, behave as if they do not understand what is happening (which, again, with precautionary measures, might just be the case: their ignorant behavior simply denotes a lack – inability? – of understanding). Or, the more despicable, they did understand, but they simply want to make a spectacle of their ability to break the law (because, hey, isn’t it so, they are ‘smarter’, ‘wiser’, ‘brighter’). More
