Understanding entrepreneurship as being spatially rooted transforms it in a regional and national competitiveness factor. Despite the increasing importance of the territorial dimension in supporting economic growth at policy and declarative levels, in practice, in Romania, the territorial structure and spatial organization of the economy contributes little to the national value added. In this context, we study regional differences in entrepreneurial initiative and perception and their possible impact on the national competitiveness strategy. We use primary data collected in three Romanian regions (Centre, North-East, Bucureşti-Ilfov) and conduct a statistical analysis of the data. The results indicate different comparative regional profiles. The regional differences in the intentions, motivations, barriers and limitation for entrepreneurship confirm the theoretical view that personal motivations of becoming an entrepreneur are determined by environmental conditions. We conclude that the regional differences should be taken into account in the elaboration of the competitiveness policy, corroborated with the results of other similar studies.

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Summary: This paper looks at how Small-and Medium-sized Enterprises from Romania use different human resource practices. Its main objective is to analyze the dynamics of the human resource management strategies used by Romanian SMEs in the period 2004-2011. This perspective will envisage aspects such as the evolution of the average number of employees in SMEs, the employees' training activities, the skills and competences required from employees in SMEs and the evolution of the average wage in SMEs. The paper envisages to identify changes in the HRM strategies used by SMEs in the context of the shift from a good economic climate to a economic crisis period. Finally, the paper will advance proposals for the improvement of the SMEs human resource management strategies in Romania.

Abstract. Higher education is in turmoil in

Today’s world is clearly fractured whether we are looking at it through economic, political, cultural or educational lenses. This is in no way something new. The world has always been in this state, but the speed with which it reacted to real or perceived threats and tried to change accordingly was barely perceivable and, therefore, easier to adopt and adapt to. Today those changes happen with incredible speed and our reactions to them may not be informed or educated and are usually taken by leaders who are, at best, controversial and at worst obviously partial to their own, petty interests against the greater public good they vowed to serve. What can higher education do in such a world? Artificial intelligence (AI) is making huge progress and, although education at all levels is lagging behind in meaningfully adopting AI and working with it, the educational system is expected to react to a world divided by the fear of AI using big data, claiming jobs, and ushering in the era of loss of human supremacy or by the glorification of AI which is only a tool, fast developing indeed, but permanently controlled by human intelligence. Even if that human intelligence is concentrated into fewer and fewer human decision makers thus contributing to the already huge gap of inequality existing in today’s world. The present paper will explore issues related to the way in which the leadership of higher education chooses to handle today’s challenges and will use the home university of the authors to illustrate what happens in Romanian universities. The discussion will be informed by the authors’ own experience in the higher education system as well as by an analysis of various discourses and narratives belonging to different stakeholders, discussing those issues in various inter/national media. The paper will offer some recommendations.

Summary: After a hiatus of more than 40 years of communism and a transition period of more than 20 years, the Romanian society begins to understand the importance of leadership in the economic, political and educational arenas. The main responsible factors for the growing awareness of the need of well performing leadership in all the arenas of social life are the current socio-economic turbulences that directly impact citizens' standard of living and not a growing body of research and education in leadership. In this context, our research scope is to assess the progress made by the academic field of leadership in Romanian research and education, highlighting the resources it has for developing sustainable leadership models. For this purpose, we will identify and analyse the existing academic programmes in leadership, past and current research projects and the Romanian literature in the field. We will study their potential to produce leadership practices and models relevant for today's instable and challenging organizational environment. Based on these findings, we will also explore the measure in which Romanian leadership research manages to transfer its findings to the private and public sectors, in order to contribute to the overall competitiveness of the Romanian business environment. We will use a qualitative and holistic methodology based mainly on secondary research.

Assessing genetic similarity and purity degree among wheat cultivars is important in breeding programmes and SSR markers have all the features that make them suitable for this purpose. The aim of this study was to assess the varietal purity and genetic diversity among wheat cultivars grown in Romania using 22 SSR markers and to choose the most informative markers. The 40 samples included in the study consisted of seeds from certified and non-certified wheat cultivars, and from other related species. To establish that varietal purity is maintained, seeds from 14 certified wheat cultivars were analysed from two harvesting campaigns (years 2019 and 2020) and seeds of four of them were also compared with the authors’ seeds. The most polymorphic SSR marker was Xwmc596 (seven alleles), followed by Xwmc603 and Xwmc474 (six); Xgwm71, Xbarc347 and Xbarc074 (five); Xgwm469, DuPw004, Xgwm155 and Xbarc184 (four); Xwmc418, Xbarc170, Xwmc533, DuPw167, DuPw115, Xgwm413 and Xgwm372 (three); and DuPw217, DuPw205, Xgwm003 and Xgwm095 (two). SSR marker Xgwm052 showed low polymorphism (one). No contamination of the varieties was observed in these harvesting campaigns since all SSRs markers showed high similarity in the certified wheat cultivars harvest analysis; genetic diversity between genotypes was also observed.