Chapter 5 The Impact of Globalization on Managerial Learning The Case of Romania Maria Cseh The Problem and the Solution. For more than forty years, Romania lived under an autocracy, with severe discipline and a largely rural culture. The man- agement system was centralized and poorly adapted to economic reforms. The overthrow of Ceausescu's regime in December 1989 marked the beginning of a new era of globalization in Romania. This chapter examines the critical learn- ing experiences that enabled owner-managers of small private companies in Romania to lead successfully in the transition to a global, free market economy, in order to determine what triggered their learning, what strategies they used, and what lessons they learned. This chapter reports the findings related to glob- alization and its influence on managers' learning and the implications for devel- oping human resources. R: apid technological development as well as the tremendous ^changes in economic, political, and social spheres brought the last decade of this century into an Age of Globalization. At the end of the 1980s, the collapse of the communist systems, with their centrally planned economies, allowed the countries of Central and Eastern Europe to join the rest of the world after more than forty years of isola- tion. As Child and Czegledy (1996) noted, "Since 1989 the area has been experiencing economic and political reforms of immense proportions. It has become a 'living laboratory' in organizational transformation within a context of profound institutional change" (p. 167). Czinkota (1998) also described how "since the Iron Curtain has disap- peared, new paradigms have emerged which few, if any of us, would have dared to even consider a mere decade ago. In managing these economic 55