EUROPEAN UNION ENLARGEMENT AS A CULTURAL SHOCK. THE ROLE OF INTERCULTURAL TEAMS’ MANAGEMENT IN INCREASING EUROPEAN COHESION

Abstract

The European Union is challenged nowadays by a dramatic multilevel process of integration. The Europe 2020 strategy promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth is defined by a set of ambitious objectives to be reached by 2020. On the other hand, the turbulent times of the economic crisis put even more pressure on the integration process. The success of this complex endeavor is heavily depending on the dimension of the cohesion specific to each of levels of the process. The cohesion of the European Union (EU) is stronger at macro (societal) level with regard to institutional, political, and economical dimensions. The cohesion of the European Union is less strong at micro level, the level of people, of the common individual, of the citizen. In other words, EU system has less cohesion at the level of individual and social fabric. An interesting hypothesis about EU enlargement is that every new “wave” of countries is a collective cultural shock for the European citizens. In conclusion, considering the history of the European Union, their citizens were subject to a constant flow of “cultural shocks”, following each new EU enlargement though admission of new member states: the big lot of 10 new countries in 2004, Romania and Bulgaria in 2007. In this respect, immigrations waves from new member countries have preceded their country accession, and to various extents, have made a first impact on the host countries culture. This paper is discussing the issue of increasing European cohesion based on a management approach. It describes the positioning of Romania on the European map of cultures, in order to identify the convergence and divergence of its societal culture with various European cultural clusters. We are arguing that: a) European organizations have a major role to play in the process of increasing cohesion within the European Union (EU); b) Organizational Management and leadership are paramount to their success and to society welfare; c) Intercultural Knowledge Management is needed for achieving the high performance of the European organizations; d) Intercultural teams are one of the most effective ways to reduce the current cohesion-less of EU, both at individual and organizational level.

Keywords

• European Union enlargement, cohesion, cultural clusters, Intercultural Knowledge Management.