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The Myth of Restructuring, ‘Competent’ Managers and the Transition to a Market Economy: a Romanian Tale[Note 1. The author thanks Tima Bansal, Jodi Evans, Valérie Fournier ...]
Author(s) -
Kelemen Mihaela
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
british journal of management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.407
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1467-8551
pISSN - 1045-3172
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8551.00127
Subject(s) - restructuring , romanian , transition (genetics) , mythology , market economy , business , economic system , economy , economics , finance , art , linguistics , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , literature , gene
A great deal of rhetoric surrounds the transformation from socialism to free‐market capitalism. This paper explores to what extent the restructuring of Romanian companies has been an attempt to pay lip‐service to prevailing rhetoric and to what extent it has been premised upon economic rationality. To restructure along structural, technological, financial but primarily managerial fronts has become a cultural value which is applauded, praised and heralded as the only way forward by the Romanian institutions of the transition. The companies under the study subscribe to such rhetoric only when they regard it as being embedded in economic rationality, as is the case with structural, financial and technological restructuring. Managerial restructuring, on the other hand, is not regarded as a technical necessity, given the view held by existing senior managers that skills and qualities acquired in the socialist regime are still appropriate to run a business successfully in the free‐market economy.