Izabela Luiza Pop

Worldwide organisations are continually searching for new sources of competitive advantage. At the same time, they are under increasing pressure to carry out their activities so as not to harm the environment in addition to having a positive impact on society. Given these facts, our paper analyses whether, and under what conditions, sustainable development could be an opportunity rather than a threat for organisations. In particular, the research focuses on investigating a possible link between sustainable development and museums' competitiveness. In order to achieve this goal, after an in-depth study of the literature, we distributed and collected surveys from 87 museums of different sizes, types, and importance from all Romanian development regions. Subsequently, we used Spearman's correlation coefficient to test the statistical hypotheses. The findings indicate that both social and environmental pillars of sustainability have positive links with the economic performance o...

The current economic context caused a reduction in the amounts allocated for the operation of museums, which led in some countries to the closure of these institutions. More and more museum managers have a pessimistic outlook regarding the future of the organization they lead, without having the ability to find and implement a viable solution to the problem of funding cuts. If until not long ago some Romanian museums experienced a growth due to an increased subsidy from the government budget (development based on increasing costs), from now on things cannot continue likewise, the only chance for museums to develop being a better use of their resources (sustainable development). Based on the current situation of museums, this article seeks to give an answer to the following questions: what does it mean sustainable development for museums, which are its benefits, and how can we measure the museum's sustainability? The case study is analyzing sustainable development of several Romanian museums and also suggests some ways to improve the sustainability of the «Baia Mare Artistic Centre» County Museum of Art.

For many people, museums are institutions that exist solely to preserve in time and ensure the conditions for keeping alive the memory of its citizens regarding the historical elements that characterize the past of a society. As incredible as it may seem, in addition to this role, museums also have an important contribution both to the creation of a proper system of social values and to the increase of the regional economic development. Museums operate by the same rules as any other organization: they have certain goals which, in order to be achieved, require processing resources which have to be turned into outputs. Furthermore, the business functions such as research and development, production, marketing, personnel, finance and accounting are also found in museums. Given the existing similarities, some questions arise: should entrepreneurship be applied to museums as it is for private organizations, or should it not? What would be the effects of an active, innovative and creative museum behavior, focused on opportunities and results? Would it be ethical for museums to adopt an entrepreneurial behavior or should they be strictly limited to the achievement of current activities? This article aims at making a brief analysis of the roles played by museums in the market, the distinctive features of the museum entrepreneurship and, accordingly, the organizational, social, and economical effects that would result from applying/using entrepreneurship in museums.

The financial difficulties of many countries have led to the need of finding solutions for a better use of public money. Emphasis is placed in a more significant extent on more efficient use of state resources in each public institution. To achieve this goal, management tools specific to private companies have been adapted and implemented in the public sector. As this approach is relatively new, there is little information on the impact of using these instruments by public institutions. Based on these considerations, the aim of this research is to analyse the extent to which performance of a financial diagnosis improves the results of organizations within the public sector. Following the case study conducted at the County Museum of Art «Baia Mare Artistic Center», it was found that after three years since the diagnosis was performed, the institution’s own revenuesincreased by more than 60%. However,some recommendations have not been implemented, reason why the performances are below...

The first natural question that any museum visitor should ask himself/herself should be related to the importance and the role played by museums in the economy of the 21st century. Do museums have any contribution to the market economy and to the development of society in general? Just like any other organization, the museum’s role is to create products, services and information in order to satisfy man’s needs. What is nevertheless different from private organizations is the fact that a museum’s survival in the marketplace is not dependent on the breakeven point. In Romania, unlike other European states, the activity of museums is entirely state-funded no matter if any minimal parameters are reached or not. Under these circumstances is the existence and functionality of museums still justified, or are these mere useless consumers of resources which only burden the state’s already weak budget with extra expenses? The purpose of this article is to sketch an economic perspective of mus...

The difficult financial situation that many countries struggle with has made it necessary to find solutions. Particular emphasis is being increasingly placed on a more effective use of state resources within each public institution. To this aim, several legislative restrictions have been passed, aimed at ensuring a more economical use of public money. However, unless each public institution proves to be interested in improving the effectiveness of its activities, such legislative restrictions fail to result in significant financial improvements at a national level. In order to improve the “health” of the Romanian public system, each public institution needs to analyze its own activity on a continuous basis, so as to identify the options for improving its financial performances. Such a financial analysis may be performed based on the data provided by the budgetary income and expenses account. A structural and dynamic analysis of the itemized revenues and expenses, correlated with an ...

Despite the failures that investment funds have registered in Romania by the year 2000, they are a financial instrument chosen by more and more people to capitalize on their savings. Therefore, open-end investment funds have had a steady growth trend in Romania over the past 10 years; their net asset value increased by 24 times and the number of investors tripled. In this context, the purpose of our paper is to present possible factors that have caused this increase. Particularly, the empirical research focuses on studying the links that might exist between open-end investment funds, bank deposits and interest rates on bank deposits. The correlations between these variables were analysed by computing the Pearson's correlation coefficient. The results highlight a high negative relationship that exist between net asset value of investment funds and bank interest. Nevertheless, it has been found that bank deposits are related neither to the interest rate nor to the open-end investm...

The uniqueness and richness of culture and heritage in the cross-border area: Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine (HU-SK-RO-UA) creates the opportunity for developing cultural tourism through innovative tourism and integrated tourism products, with the result of promoting tourism, generally in Europe and especially in Trans-Carpatic Region. For this purpose, new projects initiated can achieve better cooperation and coordination between the relevant stakeholders in the tourism sector, as well as to develop and implement joint tourism strategies. The paper presents a project proposal on promoting the culture and heritage in HU-SK-RO-UA area, through tourism function. The main activities designed in the project lead to joint cross-border tourism management in order to increase the attractiveness of cultural sites and joint cross-border touristic offer, by strengthening joint new touristic products and organizing joint cultural events.

Technological development and changes in consumer desires and preferences are external factors uncontrollable by a museum but which have a great influence on its public success. Depending on the attitude and measures taken by a museum, these factors may represent an opportunity or, conversely, a threat, and finally they can become either a strength or a weakness of the museum. Based on these considerations, the purpose of this article is to highlight some practical ways in which museums can use technological innovation in order to gain a competitive advantage. In the first part, the paper presents a series of modern technologies applied in museums that allow them to become more attractive and to better fulfill their functions of storage, conservation, research, and exploitation of the heritage. The second part presents a study conducted at County Museum of Art «Baia Mare Artistic Centre» regarding the measures taken for heritage digitization and, starting from this, for increasing t...

Any organization should seek the efficiency maximization, namely the achievement of an effect/effort ratio as high as possible. In order to apply this economic ground rule, some companies use strategies based on gaining a competitive advantage over competitors. In contrast, other companies choose lighter options to increase profitability. They apply strategies focused on agreements with competitors that aim to maintain prices at a certain level regardless of economic factors governing the market mechanism. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the positive and negative effects of cartels as a management strategy. In this regard, the first part of the article summarizes the most important theories about cartels and their characteristics, while the second part presents some European and Romanian cartels, based on data provided by the European Commission and the Competition Council. The final part presents the most important findings and conclusions but also some recommendations fo...

In this paper we presented a model of production capacity that can be used in the practice of management: developing a production plan and investment plan, correct sizing of production units and the necessary equipment, adoption of optimal solutions concentration, specialization or combining production, comparing and assessing the results obtained in relation to similar companies, operating on this market.

Worldwide organisations are continually searching for new sources of competitive advantage. At the same time, they are under increasing pressure to carry out their activities so as not to harm the environment in addition to having a positive impact on society. Given these facts, our paper analyses whether, and under what conditions, sustainable development could be an opportunity rather than a threat for organisations. In particular, the research focuses on investigating a possible link between sustainable development and museums’ competitiveness. In order to achieve this goal, after an in-depth study of the literature, we distributed and collected surveys from 87 museums of different sizes, types, and importance from all Romanian development regions. Subsequently, we used Spearman’s correlation coefficient to test the statistical hypotheses. The findings indicate that both social and environmental pillars of sustainability have positive links with the economic performance of a muse...

The sustainable development of a region depends on the sustainability and measures taken by all the public and private organizations in the respective area. Museums stand out among these organizations due to the controversies arising in connection with the role they have to play in this process of sustainable development. This paper seeks to analyze whether and why museums should become sustainable and provide an overview on the Romanian museums’ sustainability. The qualitative research based on semi-structured interviews with five museum experts showed that the sustainable development of Romania through cultural tourism is threatened due to the fact that few museums take steps towards become sustainable. Among the factors that hinder the process of sustainable change in museums can be mentioned the following: the current legislation, the scarcity and poor training of the human resources, but also the some managers’ misconception on the notion of sustainable museum and their resista...

Cultural sustainability is increasingly being perceived as a fourth dimension of sustainable development. So far, some studies have debated the way in which cultural sustainability can lead to economic, social, and environmental benefits, while others have highlighted how the classic pillars of sustainability can help museums to achieve their core cultural mission. However, empirical studies regarding cultural sustainability in museums are scarce. Thus, one of the aims of our research was to fill this gap by developing several econometric models that explain the influence of heritage exposure; environmental behavior; openness to the public; and effectiveness and performance in collecting, preserving, and researching the cultural heritage. A second aim was to advance the current knowledge in this field by creating an integrated frame that explains the interconnections between different variables that help museums become sustainable, as well as the place and role of cultural sustainab...