by Prof. Univ. dr. Marian Preda, Rector of the University of Bucharest, on the occasion of receiving the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from the State University of Moldova
- On managers, leaders, and their authority
The leaders of peoples, religions, social movements or corporations, the commanders of armies have been throughout history and still are exceptional people on whom the survival, success or failure of peoples, corporations, organizations or armies they lead depend. The exceptional leaders have made the main difference, for better or for worse, in the history of those they led. The others have only contributed.
Where would the Jewish people be today without Moses, the great leader who brought them out of captivity and lead them on one of the most fascinating journeys of people through history? What would we have today instead of the great religions without Jesus, Muhammad, or Buddha? What would peaceful social movements have been without Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela? What would Rome have looked like in Antiquity without Caesar or Octavianus Augustus, and what would human history have looked like without Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, or Stalin? Would Ford, Apple, or Microsoft have been so notorious without Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates?
What would the last 750 days of our region have looked like if it were not for Putin? But what if it were not for Zelenski?
We will talk about the exceptional people who lead us and who decide on our behalf, because the crisis of the last decades seems to reveal, once again, the importance of leaders and of decision-makers and the global crisis of the political-administrative elites.
And because leaders are, by and large, the product of their teachers, of the schools they attended, and of the cultures in which they are formed, we will speak about universities, the melting pots of political, economic, and social elites.
1.1. Managers or leaders?
Those who lead are frequently called managers or leaders. These terms are often used interchangeably, with the meaning ruler. However, there are clear distinctions between managers and leaders.
Simplifying the theory, the term manager is mainly used to refer to the activity of managing an organization’s resources in order to reach its objectives, in other words, of executive management of an organization, and that of leader in relation to influencing, persuading and leading individuals and crowds to take certain actions. Another distinction, frequently mentioned by the theories of organizations, is the manager’s focus mainly on tasks, respectively the leader’s focus mainly on people. Peter Drucker, also called the “father of management”, said that “managers do things right, and leaders do right things”. There seems to be an association here, that of managers with competence and efficiency, and that of leaders with popularity (or even populism) and with the confidence they inspire in their supporters.
If we look at the type of authority associated with each, according to Bochensky’s typology[1], it would follow that the manager is the one with formal, deontic authority, resulting from the appointment, while the leader has an epistemic, informal authority, acquired through the trust he or she emanates and inspires through what he or she says or does.
Hence the ideal situation is that in which the de jure leader, the one officially appointed or elected to office through which he or she acquires deontic authority, is also competent in what he says and does and inspires confidence, is followed by the others, thus gaining epistemic authority, de facto.
Thus, the ideal leader is the one who holds the authority of the position and that of the expert, of the competent one, of the person who knows what they are doing, being respected and followed by others, both for the administrative power held, and for their competence, thus being manager and leader at the same time.
It is not hard to guess the major contradictions between this situation of the competent-leader, of the manager-leader, and those of the incompetent leader or of the informal leader, one with competence, but with no position. One has the resources, but does not know what to do with them, the other would know what to do with the resources, but does not have access to them, due to not being a formal leader. One will be followed, just because he or she distributes resources, out of interest, out of fear, formally, mimetically, without persuasion, the other will be believed and followed with idealism, with the belief of the correct, yet utopian approach, as much as the actions carried out without resources allow it and, implicitly, without real chances of success.
The incompetent manager is likely to develop authoritarian leadership, based on fear and negative sanctions, in which they impose the authority generated by their position and formal prerogatives. In terms of leadership theories, they will practice a transactional leadership style, motivating subordinates extrinsically, on the basis of material interests: salary increases, bonuses, promotions, or privileges. The big issue, pointed out very clearly by Machiavelli in The Prince, is that the resources with which one wants to purchase the goodwill of others typically run out. Therefore, in the medium- and long-term, incompetent managers will tend to resort to sanctions and fear of punishment in order to impose their authority and keep their position.
The leader without managerial position will try to convince by stating solutions to the problems of their followers, in order to keep the support of others and to gain access to the position of manager and the resources that result from position. The felicitous case is when they also access formal power and thus become a transformational leader, inspiring through their solutions and example. If an administrative position is not obtained, over time, the informal leader will go from popular to populist, and will start to sell illusions to preserve authority.
From the above, it follows that the only approach with chances of success for a managed entity is the one in which its leader holds the formal leadership position, but also the necessary skills to inspire confidence in the project. This was the case for most of the leaders mentioned above, of competent, transformational leaders, who innovated, found creative solutions and led their countries, armies, organizations or teams to success.
1.2. Solidarity or sanctioning group authority?
J.M. Bochenski, the logical philosopher I mentioned earlier, also speaks about two types of authority of a leader over a group: solidarity and sanction. He explains that when the leader has thoroughly explained the purpose of the group and the individual tasks, and everyone knows that the achievement of the desired common goal depends on the fulfilment of the tasks, the members of the group will act to achieve it.
The same could happen with a group of people captured by a terrorist, a group that follows the terrorist’s instructions to save all members of the group, but also with the crew of a ship in a storm, who follow the captain’s instructions to reach shore safely. Both people in command, the terrorist and the shipmaster, have full authority over the group. The difference between the two cases is that the terrorist does not have a common goal with the prisoners, who listen out of fear of punishment, while the ship commander has a common goal with the crew and authority is based on solidarity.
In other words, leaders who want the public good share goals with those they lead. They will thus be followed out of solidarity. Those who have personal, selfish goals, different from those of the group, of the organization, of the country will be listened to out of fear, like terrorists, and not out of solidarity.
Imagine a mayor who wants to achieve some objectives very important for their community, which are brought to the knowledge of the fellow citizens. They will execute the mayor’s directives to achieve those goals because they want the same thing, they have the same goal as their leader. Of course, this all happens on condition that the common goals and purpose are explained to citizens, otherwise they will not support objectives that they do not know and do not understand. This secondary condition is the logical proof of the need for transparency, communication in organizations, a condition without which the manager’s authority before the group will not be total, and the fulfilment of commands will not be certain.
But if the mayor changes the ledges in the community, although the ledges are almost new, and they do this with their son’s company, or buys palm trees from the communal budget, although people lack sewage or running water, surely the projects will not be welcomed by the community, but they may not be publicly challenged and tacitly accepted by the people. But that acceptance will not be out of conviction, but out of fear of the mayor.
Bochenski also talks about blindly accepting authority by virtue of the leader’s charisma or of an ideology that assumes vague goals; he considers that acceptance to be irrational and, as a consequence of its irrationality, considers it immoral: „The acceptance of a deontic authority without any foundation must be rejected for moral reasons” (Bochenski 1992: 90). Extremist ideologies or populist projects propose vague, irrational goals, so the authorities promoting them should be rejected. Did the Germans really have a common goal with Hitler in exterminating Jews, or did ordinary Russians like Putin want to bomb, kill civilians and conquer Ukraine? And yet, the illusions transmitted by Hitler or Putin were and are supported by large masses of citizens through irrational pseudo-solidarity.
And the far-left ideas of the communists began to be based on a deontic authority of ideological solidarity (at least on a declarative level) towards the poor, after which the objectives of the communist bosses and those of the mass (executioners) became different, and the authority became Orwellian, of a sanctioning nature.
The best example of this is the exercise of authority by the communist regime in East Berlin, which evolved precisely from an authority of solidarity in the early years (free passage from East to West, symbolic borders, etc.) to a sanctioning authority (with the closing of the border in 1958 and the building of the wall in 1961). It was a clear image (albeit on a small scale) of what had happened to the authority of communist leaders all over the world: it began with the illusion of ideology and ended with the fear of tyranny.
- About the role of elites in a society
Those who have exceptional qualities and who dominate through their influence various social groups at the top of which they place themselves are those who represent the elites of those groups. These could be cultural, scientific, economic, political, administrative elites.
Irrespective of how tempting egalitarian ideas that sell the pleasant illusion of non-difference between individuals may be, the major impact of geniuses, great minds in the progress of science and technology, in knowledge and socio-economic development throughout history is obvious.
Consistent studies have shown that there is a 98.4% similarity between the human and the chimpanzee DNA. The difference of 1.6%, however, is what made humans progress and dominate the earth, while chimpanzees remained in the jungle.
The great inventor Thomas Alva Edison said that “success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. It is obvious that all people can sweat, but very few have the inspiration to find new, creative, and effective solutions to big problems. Those who sweat with the brilliance of their inspiration are the ones who constitute the elites.
Western social science theories of economic, political, and military elites often include critical judgment usually focused on concentrating resources and power on too few decision-makers at the expense of the many, and on the fact that not merit but gender, race, or descent underlie elite membership.
Without ignoring these criticisms, with which I largely agree, I will put them aside in this discussion because they are characteristic of Western capitalist systems that have had continuity for centuries and great stability of their economic and political elites. Moreover, in other social spheres such as the arts and sciences, merit plays a much more important role than in politics, for example.
Good or bad, reformed or not, elites of all kinds – economic, scientific, organizational, military – concentrate the bulk of resources (20% of members own 80% of resources) and produce, according to the Pareto Principle, most of the results of a system. The Pareto Principle, which applies to many fields, postulates that 80% of results are produced by the most effective 20% of individuals. In academia, for example, 80% of ideas, publications, or innovations are produced by about 20% of individuals. If we apply this principle within the main elite of 20%, it would follow that the “elite of the elite”, i.e. 4% of the entire population analysed (20% of 20%), will produce 64% of all outcomes (80% of 80%). Irrespective of how approximate are these calculations, it is clear that the importance of the 4% is essential in any system, be it a company, a university or a country.
In the context of former communist countries, such as Romania and Moldova, the problem of political-administrative elites who make decisions at the top is inefficiency resulting from negative selection, rather than their unfair structure.
Communism as a system of government lost the battle with the capitalist system primarily because of its comparative inefficiency. It became ineffective because it destroyed its intellectual and scientific elites, inherited from previous systems, and thus drastically diminished its capacity for analysis and decision-making. It is like having brain reduction surgery and developing your muscles instead. In the human forms of social organization of the past, hunter-gatherers, farmers, ancient or feudal times, or even the industrial society, because the use of physical force was important, you could survive with many muscles, that is, with physical strength, and with lower cognitive capacities. Although great battles were won by ideas and innovations, physical strength mattered quite a lot in the past.
In the present, you can survive without muscles, but the ability to process information and make the right decisions makes all the difference. Stephen Hawking, the great astrophysicist who made a major impact in recent decades speaking from a smart wheelchair, would not have mattered in Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Just as a great warrior of Antiquity would probably have mattered less in our time.
- On public management and political-administrative elites
Firstly, I have looked at the features of managers and leaders in general and outlined their types of authority and the contexts in which their authority is born and survives. I have outlined the properties of elites. In the next section, I will move on to the analysis of elites in the public, political-administrative system. In order to understand their nature, it is important to begin with differentiating them from those in the private sector.
3.1. The features of leaders in the public system
Beyond the interests and contexts specific to the Romanian space, there are major universal differences between public and private leaders. In fact, if we analyse the managerial elites in the private sector, we will see that they seem much more efficient and are less contested than those in public organizations. To see what it takes to have competent public elites like those in the private sector, we need to briefly explore the differences between the two.
The first distinction comes from the different purpose of the two types of entities. Private companies are profit-driven, public companies are mostly non-profit. For private managers, performance is easy to measure quantitatively, for public managers, without precise targets referring to efficiency, it is more difficult to measure managerial performance.
Private companies compete with other similar companies and comparative performance analysis is frequent and relevant, while public institutions have no real competition, many having a unique character and holding monopoly, at least locally.
Private leaders are elected, evaluated and validated only professionally, objectively, by the shareholders of organizations, who are interested only in the performance of the organization and of the manager. Public leaders are appointed by political leaders or parties (who behave as if they do not depend on the performance of those they appoint), and are elected or publicly validated by large masses, with non-aggregated, indirect interests and no permanent evaluation mechanisms. Shareholders carefully appoint private managers because they will manage their personal properties, while parties, their leaders or voters appoint managers of everyone’s properties, the impact of those appointed on their individual interests being perceived as insignificant.
Populism, through which they can capture the goodwill of the masses, is the great danger for public leaders, while mercantile cynicism and lack of empathy and humanity in decision making is the danger for private leaders.
The public interest promoted by public managers is predominantly associated with intrinsic motivation, while private interest is associated with extrinsic motivation for private individuals.
Dictators are public leaders who establish themselves as private owners and leaders of public goods, making the transition from the public interest they claimed for power to the private interest (theirs and their camarilla’s), the private interest they promote after ascending to power. This is the major contradiction in the case of dictatorial regimes.
Public leaders are harassed by the opposition, by alternative leaders who want their percentages, being in full conflict with each other, private ones in a business relation (not in conflict) with competition from other organizations on the market.
3.2. Political and administrative leaders in Romania
After the successive crises of the last two decades and the inefficiency of the solutions proposed by decision-makers, dissatisfaction with the political-administrative elites all over the world has grown. In this context, the chances of rise of populist or extremist parties and personalities increase.
In the Romanian space, the dissatisfaction generated by the global context towards the political-administrative class is accentuated by two specific regional factors:
- a) First, the negative selection of political-administrative elites promoted by parties according to the Stalinist, learnèd and culturally inherited model, which implies promotion based on loyalty to the party leader and not on competence. The Stalinist principle of “party discipline” is publicly enunciated by all parties, and the exclusion of “Mensheviks” is frequently applied to any form of internal dissent. Thus, examples of gross incompetence of some public decision-makers who came to power on the basis on nepotism and loyalty have increased contempt and hatred for parties and alienated many genuine specialists from politics.
- b) Secondly, the egalitarian ideas of the communist regime survived culturally in large parts of the population. Complemented by flagrant inequities such as special pensions and other privileges secured by the political class, egalitarian ideas accentuated “class hatred” which has become “political-administrative class hatred”.
Thus, the public opinion in our country is much more sceptical than the Western one with respect to the role and importance of elites in general and political-administrative ones in particular, and does not consider merit as the main criterion of success and social ascension.
Paradoxically, amid general dissatisfaction, a kind of fatalistic acceptance of mediocrity has set in, negative selection being no longer conscious, being ignored, tolerated and even practiced by those who make decisions and promote people in politics and administration.
Our decision-makers do not seem to care about appointing or promoting incompetent or mediocre people to office. Here are some questions I would ask them to wake them up to reality: would they pay for a show with mediocre or weak actors or musicians? Would they accept to be operated on by a surgeon chosen on the basis of a party card, and not on professional competence? Would they accept a weak lawyer, who is a friend’s son or mistress, to defend them in a lawsuit?
If the answer to each of the questions were “no”, as is normal, the natural final question would follow: then why do they nonchalantly promote incompetent secretaries of state, advisers or directors through ministries, just because they seem not to see the “performance” because they do not go out much on the public stage and because they do not seem to negatively influence their lives? Health or freedom? They should realize that these incompetent civil servants, even if they are not surgeons, kill slowly, over time, silently through their decisions.
If an actor is weak, if a performance is weak, people leave the room; if a policymaker is weak, if a government is weak, people leave the country.
But we do not see the country deserted simultaneously, live, we only see it depopulated in statistics.
I believe that the best overall indicator of a government’s efficiency or inefficiency is the balance of external migration during its mandate.
The great American sociologist Erving Goffman said that all individuals play social roles on the public stage, according to their statuses, behaving according to the expectations that others have of them, like actors according to the script of a performance.
The biggest problem of political actors playing their public roles on the political stage, in front of us, is that they do not have the necessary training for these roles. They do not have the talent, they do not have the professional training for acting, they have not rehearsed, and they have not memorized the “script”, and most of them do not actually have any script on what to do, meaning they do not have programs, strategies, solutions – so they just improvise.
Managerial performances, as well as acting, are a collective, team effort, an effort that involves dialogue and mutual support; our political actors seem to love only monologue. Even when you put them together, a dialogue of the deaf results.
One of the most eloquent and creative criticisms of the negative selection of our political-administrative elites was put into lyrics in a famous song by the band Sarmalele reci:
[The country wants you stupid]
[What’s the use, what if you learn too much in life?
It can blow up your brain…
What’s the use of books
About dead rulers?
All that is required of you today is to be null!
What good is learning Romanian language so much?
You’ve been speaking it cursively since you were two years old!
Do not overdo it
Nor with math.
Just know how much not to mess with money.
Chorus:
Ah, how beautiful!
Bright future
It shows itself to the idiots!
So, be obedient
versus the highest put.
Don’t forget that the country wants you stupid.
Don’t try to realize yourself in life!
No job has a future,
And not daring
try to change something
After 2000 years of light sleep!
It’s more honest to find an acquaintance.
Let him serve you, you serve him.
A solid back
will promote you quickly
in the National Army of dry heads.]
Țara te vrea prost [The country wants you stupid] has become a well-known and fatalistically accepted expression of the state of facts. No one asked: what country wants us stupid? Without being able to prove that there is a program of other countries to encourage the counterselection of administrative elites, it is obvious that the countries in the area that have economic and political interests in Romania, hostile countries, such as Russia, want poor quality management and stagnation, so they will even want the stupid at the head of Romania. Just as fools are wanted or would have wanted at the head of Ukraine, for example. Of course, their fools, if possible, if not, for them it is preferable to be stupid rather than competent. As for Western partners, however, they need decent partners, at least in certain areas where we do not compete with them, such as defence. It logically follows that they would rather want us mediocre.
If others want us stupid or mediocre, if we want competent elites in the Romanian public space, it is a chore for ourselves – because no one else will form them.
- About the role of elite universities in society
A great Italian essayist, contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, wrote that Florence, the symbol city of the Renaissance, possessed in the fifteenth century all 7 essential things to achieve perfection: 1. Absolute freedom; 2. A large population, rich and elegant; 3. A river with clean water within its walls; 4. Properties, castles and on the 5th place – a university. Also added were: 6. Valuable artists, such as Leonardo or Michelangelo, and 7. Banks. As you see, even then, freedom came first, and the university was placed ahead of banks, the power of ideas being considered more important than that of money[2].
But this was claimed by a great intellectual raised in the country where the first university was founded. Ordinary people have always been sceptical about the importance of higher education and the ability of the educated to do practical things.
What remains notorious is the example of the great philosopher and mathematician Thales of Miletus, whom some contemporaries disputed because he was poor, saying that if he could not make wealth, he did not use his wisdom so much.
As a result, by anticipating in advance, on the basis of astronomical signs, that after a bad year for olive production, an excellent year would follow in the region of Miletus, Thales rented all the olive mills in the area for a small amount and paid in advance since winter, when the owners did not anticipate exceptional production. As his foresight was good, and he had created a monopoly in the area, Thales became, overnight, very rich, and thus proved to those who challenged him that intelligence can also bring profit.
It may seem that these are stories from history, that they are rather exceptions, that university studies are no longer very important in the present, when success depends more likely on relationships, perhaps also on entrepreneurial spirit, guts or luck. Perhaps each of these plays a role. But mathematics and other kinds of systematic knowledge also have their importance.
What better proof than the fact that 5 of the top 8 richest people in Romania in the Forbes Top for 2023[3] are graduates of a mathematics faculty and two of the others are university professors of computer science in the US, the only exception in the top being the athlete Ion Țiriac. The two Pavăl brothers, Dragoș and Adrian, owners of Dedeman, Daniel Dineș, from UiPath, and Florin and Măriuca Talpes, owners of BitDefender, graduated from mathematics faculties in Bucharest or Iasi and are top performers in business.
4.1. In fact, why are some people exceptional?
A well-known American author, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a very interesting book about exceptional performers[4] in various fields.
To sum up the beautiful story, Gladwell demonstrates that three elements are essential to be successful, to become exceptional in a field:
1) To have the necessary qualities, talent, potential.
2) To be placed in an appropriate context in order to capitalize on your talent (appropriate culture, social system, technology, mentors/teachers, training environment in general); these opportunities, which are related to context, are commonly associated by us only with luck, although they can be sought or created.
3) To follow the rule of minimum 10,000 hours of practice, work, exercise, required according to specialists to become an expert in a field.
All three of these conditions must be met simultaneously in order to be successful. Gladwell demonstrates that many people with exceptional potential have wasted it, so talent is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. He offers dozens of interesting examples that show how important context is and how it can be statistically demonstrated that great performers in business, science, sports are concentrated in historical periods and in very small areas, where they had favourable contexts – favourable conditions for cultivating talent. For example, of the 75 richest people in the known history of humanity, 14 (19%) are Americans born 9 years apart between 1831 and 1840, just matched in age around 1860-1870, when the American economy experienced tremendous growth through the development of manufacturing and the Wall Street stock exchange. Another 6 are Americans born between 1953 and 1956 who made their fortunes at the expense of IT companies (Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Balmer, Steve Jobs, Bill Joy, Eric Schmidt). They were old enough to learn to do programming just as the first powerful computers appeared and the IT industry flourished. All 6 were smart, but more importantly, they were in the area of computer centres at universities or other institutions. In addition, they worked tenaciously day after day, night after night, whenever they could practice programming on those supercomputers. That is, they have completed their 10,000 hours of practicing a profession necessary both in sports and in science and in any field to become an expert. If we work 50 weeks/year, 40 hours/week, results in 2000 hours/year, which, multiplied by 5 years, gives exactly 10,000 hours of practice. Five years is precisely the period of a bachelor’s and master’s degree or a serious doctorate.
4.2. Freedom – an essential element for elite formation
An essential context element for the formation of exceptional people is complete freedom. Gladwell mentions exceptional cultural environments such as a local Italian community in the US, Roseto, where human relations were so good that people were happy and did not get sick. Studies by doctors and sociologists who failed to explain the extraordinary longevity and health of the inhabitants of Roseto concluded that the social environment – the community – was the only explanation for them.
By analogy, the open, autonomous, creative academic environment is the best context for training exceptional leaders, strong elites. That is why academic autonomy and freedom are essential.
However, universities cannot operate in a contrasting social, economic and political environment devoid of complete freedom. Open society and full social freedom are essential conditions for a healthy academic environment.
The importance of freedom for the formation of strong characters was masterfully expressed by Dragu, a character from the novel Huliganii [Hooligans], published by Mircea Eliade in 1935:
„La 18 ani, ești încă liber, în opinii, în acte, liber chiar pe teoria pe care ți-o vei alege în interpretarea vieții. La 25 de ani, după ce ți-ai spus primul cuvânt, – și orice ai face, la acea vârstă, nu e decât un cuvânt – ești deja secat, fixat. Trebuie să rămâi tu însuți, să fii tu însuți, să te realizezi, să creezi… Dacă ai ști cât vă invidiez, pe d-ta, pe Petru, pe toți huliganii… […] Există un singur debut fertil în viață: experiența huliganică. Să nu respecți nimic, să nu crezi decât în tine, în tinerețea ta, în biologia ta, dacă vrei… Cine nu debutează așa, față de el însuși sau față de lume – nu va crea nimic. Să poți uita adevărurile, să ai atâta viață în tine încât adevărurile să nu te poată pătrunde, nici intimida – iată vocația de huligan…”.
[“When you are 18, you are still free, in opinions, in acts, free on the very theory you will choose in interpreting life. At 25, after you have said your first word, and whatever you do, at that age, it is just one word, you are already drained, fixed. You have to stay yourself, be yourself, realize yourself, create… If you knew how much I envy you, Peter, all the hooligans… […] There is only one fertile onset in life: the hooligan experience. To respect nothing, to believe only in yourself, in your youth, in your biology, if you will… Whoever does not start like this, towards himself or towards the world – will not create anything. To be able to forget truths, to have so much life inside you that truths cannot penetrate or intimidate you – this is the vocation of a hooligan…”].
It is precisely this type of context, the fertile ground of freedom, that has been scorched by communist regimes and must be recreated, reconstituted by us, by academics, starting with our institutions, with universities. A space where merit, creativity, genius, and entrepreneurial spirit develop without hindrance, under the “patronage” of fundamental values of humanity such as truth, good and beauty.
Universities are essential because they create the overall social context of a country. Academia fuels culture with inspiring ideas, industry with inventions that streamline, the economy with resources to meet human needs, and the social system with solutions to society’s problems. In addition, universities produce most of the “heroes” of modern society: innovators, reformers, writers, commentators, admired “stars” such as Nobel laureates, great inventors, great authors of literature or art who inspire generations of young people.
Even if the ruling elite may like it or not, universities are alma mater, surrogate and loving mothers for tomorrow’s elites.
- Conclusions
To have competent elites we need strong, elite universities.
Sun Tzu, the great philosopher and strategist who lived 2400 years ago in China and wrote The Art of War, said: “war is a matter of vital importance to the state, the realm of life and death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory to study it as thoroughly as possible”.
Sun Tzu, like Machiavelli, is still studied in management courses nowadays. If we replace “prince” or “commander” with “manager” and “war” as a process with “public management”, very topical texts result:
“Public management is an issue of vital importance to the state, the realm of life and death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory to study it as thoroughly as possible.”
Management based on merit and competence must become a priority and strategic for the public system. Who does not have managers, raise them in elite universities because they are not to be found.
Real leaders know how to promote their individual and small group interest through collective and large group interest. You can be selfish, but intelligent if you understand that by serving the public interest, you better promote your individual or family interest in the long run. Simply put, organizations are more effective than individuals combined.
From this perspective, we must ask ourselves: what is the pyramid of priorities of our leaders? What do they put first? Their individual, family, community, nation, or human interests?
That is why we need to have inspirational leaders of the type “ship commander”, national team captain, not dictatorial-terrorist, “plantation lord”, or old estate types.
All trends seem to show that between the two forms of organizing decision-making entities, the “organized force” of authoritarian regimes, as Einstein called it, and competence or “organized science” (according to rules), in the long run “organized science” represented by teams of experts acting freely in the service of the democratic state or private entities will always prevail. And universities are the main sources of “organized science”.
The battle between the “organized fear” of authoritarian-dictatorial regimes and the love of wisdom, truth and freedom of “organized science” in universities and free scientific communities will continue in the world. Democracy and freedom, being the only conditions that can create a good context for organised science, must be vigorously defended.
Germany in the mid-twentieth century expelled Einstein and kept Hitler. Einstein and Oppenheimer won the war, in a way. Hitler’s scientists, working under terror, did not create the decisive weapons like the atomic bomb, but free scientists in the US, with all their justified moral dilemmas, created it and stopped the war.
Democracies, open societies, prosperous societies, those that promote merit and provide social mobility are conducive to creative elites. Without elite and autonomous universities, economically powerful so that they are technologically well-equipped, we will not have productive, fertile elites.
That is why I finally ask, almost rhetorically: in the Romanian cultural space, do we want to create favourable contexts for the formation of our elites, that is, strong universities? Because, for now, one cannot see that we are doing –either from the budgets that universities receive for research, or from their funding per student for professional training programs.
If we agree with this obvious truth, that the role of top universities is to produce elites, and if the two states with majority Romanian population, Romania and the Republic of Moldova, want competent ruling elites in the future, then the duty of states and those who lead them is to massively support their top universities.
To paraphrase Spiru Haret who said: “How school looks today, this is how the country will look tomorrow”, I will say, distinguished audience, as elite universities in a country are today, this is how the elites of that country will look tomorrow.
Chișinău, 26.04.2024
[1] Bochenski, J. M., Ce este autoritatea?, Bucharest: Humanitas, 1992.
[2] Benedetto, apud Walter Isaacson – Leonardo da Vinci. Bucharest: Publica, 2018, p. 45.
[3] https://www.forbes.ro/exclusiv-top-forbes-500-cine-sunt-cei-mai-bogati-romani-in-2023-fratii-dedeman-daniel-dines-si-ion-tiriac-s-au-luptat-pentru-fruntea-clasamentului-361070
[4] Gladwell, M., Outliers-the story of success, Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 2008.
