ROMANIAN AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN, COMERCIAL, FINANCIAL AND BANKING ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIPS

ENGLISH





THE ROMANIAN SOCIETY DESCRIBED BY USING TROMPENAAR’S PRINCIPLES





Professor: Student:

Roxana Emanuela DUDE Catalin D.S. Marginean
II – A – 435











INTRODUCTION

Romania, a more or less gorgeous country from Eastern Europe, has a society which is a far cry from the societies of the other countries from the same region. No one knows exactly why, although some people blame it on the Communists, which had the control of the country for some decades.
In this paper, I intend to describe Romanian society as it is in 2005, using Trompenaars Principles. There are four dimensions to be analyzed: power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity.

POWER DISTANCE

To begin with, power distance relates to the degree of equality or inequality between people in a particular society. Another definition for power distance, given by Hofstede, is: “power distance is the extent to which people expect and are willing to accept that power is distributed unequally. Inequality of power is a basic fact of life. It cannot be 100% eliminated. It is impossible to have no power distance, because this means that everyone is exactly equal (skills, actions, genetics etc) unless you are on about a bunch of identical lumps of rocks. Inequality can take many forms – the differences of physical and mental characteristics, social status and prestige, wealth, political power, rights, privileges etc. All of these are somewhat independent of each other, and in fact the link between them is culturally dependant. Not to put too fine a point on it, Romania is obviously a country with a high power distance.
First of all, Romanians seem to expect differences in power between people, yet they are often cynical about personas in positions of authority. They love to ridicule authority and people in position of power. For example, the pres