New Era for Romania Means Managers Need New Methods

Alexandru Livitchi, who has toiled in the bowels of Romania’s Agriculture Ministry for 20 long years, expresses no fondness for Nicolae Ceausescu’s ironfisted Communist regime.

“Before the 1989 revolution,” Livitchi, 54, says matter-of-factly, “we had only one right--the right to keep our mouths shut.”

Unfortunately, keeping his mouth shut has left Livitchi--and thousands of other veteran bureaucrats like him throughout Eastern Europe--understandably unsure about how to make the sorts of difficult decisions that must be made, if the region is ever to struggle back to its feet.

Barring a miraculous transformation, most Westerners believe, this older generation of government managers will have to give way to younger blood--and the sooner the better.

The old way of doing business remains painfully evident to Western businessmen who have dealt with the irrigation division of Romania’s Agriculture Ministry, which Livitchi heads.

James B. Kelly, Brussels-based vice president of the U.S. firm Valmont Industries, is trying to sell irrigation systems to Romania. Kelly says Valmont’s system would immediately triple corn production, thus paying for itself in a year.

But to Kelly’s astonishment, the government is balking.

“How can you do business with people who still don’t understand such elementary business concepts as return on investment?” he wonders.

“Our specialists know their business,” insists Livitchi. Practically in the next breath, he concedes, “We have to recognize that the quality of some of our irrigation systems is very low.”