Strategic Innovation-Access Path Towards a New Paradigm of an Academic Career Management.

This paper highlights the present vulnerability of the teacher's status, which has comprised the Romanian academic environment, affected by a material - but also legitimacy - crisis. The importance of Universities for knowledge creation and distribution, minimized due to a tendentious "political arithmetic", needs a notable resuscitation, which cannot be generated if we are not aware of the fact that - in a knowledge based society - education needs teachers not only in the hypostasis of lackeys of the system, but also in the quality of decision-makers, counsellors, critic and lucid consciences. The Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiesti (PGUP) has been the ground selected for the case study achieved. The investigation instrument used has been the questionnaire, applied to a representative number of academics, its structuring following edifying target-zones, such as: opportunities of investing in the own education, aspirations and needs system, organizational culture and perception of changes. Multiple choice closed questions alternate with interrogations characterized by scaled answers, their analysis implying a pragmatic, multidisciplinary reference model, with a synchronic development, based on interpretative-constructivist methodological inter-conditioning. The validation of an obvious statutory injuring of the academic profession requires a strategic-managerial reorientation of innovative type, triggering a proactive behaviour of the employees by exiting the status-quo and confronting the provocations. Therefore, the aggregation of a new combination of resources imposes itself as a need which could create sustainable opportunities to the employees, the key of success in applying such strategy being the maintenance of the innovation spirit always awake. Some strategic management directions are thus outlined and intended for improving the negative perception of the teaching staff from PGUP regarding the opacity of the institution's management or the controversial reform of the Romanian educational system. Consequently, the transition from the traditional management based on conformation and control towards an innovative-creative institutional "philosophy" is needed. The redefinition of the personal effectiveness style by urging the academic staff towards self-reflexivity, the creation of a supportive culture and getting closer the interaction model "management - employees" to the participative management pattern - are elements that contribute to the crystallization of an innovative organization, capable of "empowering" the employees by cultivating the "confidence capital" and turning the institutional policy towards humanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]