THE IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS ON THE ROMANIAN IT FIRMS' STRATEGIC BEHAVIOR

Our paper emphasizes the competitive landscape of software industry which was highly affected by the crisis as all the other sectors. Our analysis started from the global perspective of this industry, revealing the strategic behavior of the major IT players from worldwide in the context of the crisis; in the second part, our approach was concentrated on the Romanian software and IT services market and we highlighted the crisis impact on their business strategies. Romanian IT firms which are able to face the crisis effects are characterized by a market-driven thinking that is more focused on customers than competitors. Understanding customers buying criteria is essential in highly competitive software markets, while designing and using a Competitive Intelligence tool will help their management teams to find the best strategic options in view to improve the market position. In this way, we consider that the Cultural Intelligence pattern that we developed and discussed in the last part of the paper can be a powerful strategic tool for the IT project managers.