Leadership in Romanian Small to Medium Enterprises

We have conducted a broad statistical research on Romanian small to medium enterprises (SMEs), with the goal of better understanding: (1) the incipient organizational culture of a recently-opened East European market; and (2) the role of leadership in increasing the competitiveness of SMEs. The paper studies the perceived characteristics of a leader and their influence on the organization's results (as seen by employees), and it tries to reveal the subliminal inter-correlations among these characteristics. The method is factor analysis (implemented in SPSS), for a questionnaire with 23 items, answered by 930 subjects on a five-point Likert scale. The six factors identified by our analysis were: adaptability; cooperation; authority; charisma; confidence; motivation. By highlighting these basic components, our study aims both at increasing competitiveness in Romanian enterprises and at designing better training programs for managers and entrepreneurs acting on East European markets, adapted to the real characteristics of these young economic environments.