Reasons for Romania

You may be wondering why we chose to feature Romania in the current issue of Business Spotlight. Well, here are some of the reasons:

• Romania is an interesting example of a country in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in a state of transformation after years of communist rule.
  
  
• Romania recently joined the EU.
  
  
• Romania is an important country for outsourcing activities for German companies.
  
  
• To understand Romania, you need to appreciate its historical roots.
  
  
• In Romania, there are very important regional differences.
  
  
• In Romania, the role of women in engineering and management is different from their role in Germany.

My hope is that even readers who are not directly doing business with Romania will find our content interesting. Many of the principles of doing business with Romania can play an important role when dealing with other countries in CEE and beyond.

I had a more personal reason for interviewing Adrienne Rubatos for the magazine and CD. She is a leading expert on the German-Romanian interface. I have known her for many years and went to a fascinating presentation she gave at a conference of the Society of Intercultural Education, Training and Research in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2007. She reported on her work with intercultural top management teams in the German automotive industry in Romania. You can find her slides here.

For me, the most interesting part of her talk was about differences in training style found in different countries, based on the example of Germany and Romania. That’s a topic I’d like to go deeper into in the future.