PROMOTING ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN GREEK RURAL ORGANIZATIONS

Despite being one of the most important productive sectors of the Greek economy, the Greek rural sector has always had significant pathogeneses, significantly reducing its growth capacity. The absence of a strategic plan, excessive support from European and national resources, the lack of expertise in agricultural production, the ailing cooperative organization and the significant entrepreneurship shortfall have turned the rural sector into a problematic sector. The economic crisis along with the increasing international competition has created a highly unfavorable environment for the Greek producers. In this context, it should be noted that important element of the agricultural sector in Greece is the participation of producers in private cooperatives. However, the shortcomings of these cooperatives regarding their organization and management, question their sustainability. This derives on one hand from the absence of private sector features and on the other hand, from the cooperatives missing an entrepreneurship spirit. This paper focuses on the beneficial effect of entrepreneurship in enhancing the economic efficiency of cooperatives thus adding to their productivity tools. The research methodology consists of secondary analysis and comparative benchmarking of successful business practices of various cooperative organizations. The main goal of the paper is to argue in favor of the theory that entrepreneurship may shield agricultural cooperatives by improving their economic performance

Strategic Human Resource Management in the International Hospitality Industry. An Extensive Literature Review

This review takes an evolutionary perspective on the development of strategic human resource management literature. Managing human resources strategically, provides to a hotel business the opportunity to develop its plans for recruitment, training, and compensation based on the goals of the organization, ensuring a greater chance of organizational success. The paper focuses on how the field has evolved to its current state, articulates many of the major findings and contributions, and discusses how its potential future evolution. This approach contributes to the field of strategic human resource management by analyzing cases and good practices from the international environment. The article is aimed at exploring human resource management from a strategic perspective, tracing and exploiting effective managerial approaches of hospitality industry in the global environment. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Trait Emotional Intelligence & Leadership: A Study of Managers and Employees

Over the past 30 years, Emotional Intelligence has been gaining ground in the field of business and management. Much has been written about the importance of Emotional Intelligence (EI) in leadership, which overlaps with the concept of management (Young & Dulewicz, 2008). Although, there are many researches into the connection between leadership and emotional intelligence, there seems to be a research gap between Trait Emotional Intelligence and Transformational Leadership (TL). This study examines the effects of the factors of Trait EI (emotionality, self–control, sociability, well–being, adaptability and motivation) (TraitEI, 2021; Petrides, 2009) on the dimensions of Transformational Leadership (vision, inspirational communication, supportive leadership, intellectual stimulation, personal recognition) (Rafferty and Griffin, 2004). Two groups were surveyed for this study. One (with 74 participants) consisted of managers who work in public or private sector’ organizations. The other sample (with 120 participants) consisted of employees who work in public or private sector’ organizations. The aim of the study was to investigate the connection between Trait EI and Transformational Leadership from the manager’s point of view, and from the employees’ point of view. Are there any differences between those two points of view? Are there any differences between Trait EI and Transformational Leadership due to the sectors (private – public) of the organizations? The tools used in this research include the following: a) Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEI-QUE SF) by Petrides (2009) and b) Rafferty’s and Griffin’s (2004) Five Dimensions of Transformational Leadership Test. The current paper hopes to contribute to the comprehension of the linkage among Trait EI and TL on Greek organizations managers’, and trigger future empirical research in the area. © The authors, 2021. All Rights Reserved

Strategic Hotel Management in the “Hostile” International Environment

This paper examines the perspectives of using effective strategic management in the hotel industry in order to overcome the extended difficulties of the hostile international environment. Hotels are facing increasing challenges. Globalization, high competition of different tourism markets, technological developments, political and social circumstances (such as coronavirus), various needs and demands of multinational customers and many other factors are leading hotel industry to activate a more strategic perspective in order to deal successfully with the elements affecting them. The international developments gradually lead even small hotel enterprises to adopt extensive tools of strategic management in order to increase their competiveness. The article is aimed at exploring the increasing necessity of using extending strategic management approaches to anticipate threats and possible opportunities by exploiting the advantages and dealing with the weak features of hotel enterprises, providing a framework of interrelated issues based on the existing literature in this research field. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The Intention and Expectations of Modern Robotic Technologies in the Hotel Industry

The purpose of this paper was to study the feasibility and expectations of use and quality of service robots in the hotel industry. For this purpose, the authors have relied on a research tool, also used in the pilot research conducted in 2020, regarding the intention to the use and expectations of service robots. The research was based on a sample of 413 hotel employees in hotels in Greece. An important outcome of this research is that overall the intention and expectations from the use of robots affect quality of service of robots in the hotel industry. Also, it appears that demographics can be a mediator in the examined relationships. This research presents a significant originality and importance for two reasons; it examines the perceptions of hotel personnel to use robots–since most of the existing empirical evidence derives mostly from consumers–and secondly it creates the necessary research framework and tools for future research. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

The Intention and Expectations of Modern Robotic Technologies in the Hotel Industry

The purpose of this paper was to study the feasibility and expectations of use and quality of service robots in the hotel industry. For this purpose, the authors have relied on a research tool, also used in the pilot research conducted in 2020, regarding the intention to the use and expectations of service robots. The research was based on a sample of 413 hotel employees in hotels in Greece. An important outcome of this research is that overall the intention and expectations from the use of robots affect quality of service of robots in the hotel industry. Also, it appears that demographics can be a mediator in the examined relationships. This research presents a significant originality and importance for two reasons; it examines the perceptions of hotel personnel to use robots–since most of the existing empirical evidence derives mostly from consumers–and secondly it creates the necessary research framework and tools for future research. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

The use of big data in tourism: Current trends and directions for future research

The aim of this research is to examine the new landscape that is taking shape in the tourism economy, due to the adoption of technological innovations. The technologies and systems used to make the most of the resulting interdisciplinary and multilingual big data, the methods by which heterogeneous elements from different sources are incorporated to bring new knowledge, and the modern services that are ultimately implemented and provided to the public, as well as the people involved in this process, and those who benefit from the new services are among the issues analyzed. The work is not limited to a simple mapping of space but concludes with an evaluation of the systems already implemented and the various methods of analysis and exploitation of large-scale data for this industry, which is based on detailed research of the current literature to identify the potential gaps for future research. This is a literature review. The authors have identified the content of this research on well-known online databases which include scholar, google and Scopus. They used the appropriate keywords such as “big data” & “tourism innovation” to reach the publications used in this research, also given attention on using recent papers which are derived from reliable journals. The research has concluded that the use of big data in the tourism sector is a rising trend. Big data creates expectations for a better understanding of tourism demand and the adjustment of supply by tourism companies to meet the demands of tourists and the profitable activity of tourism businesses. There is a need to examine how can big data help the hotels to deal with Covid-19 pandemic, which can be a topic for future research. Big data is one of the most recent trends on innovation, Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and knowledge management. Hence, there is a need to gather and analyze the existing publications which concern the tourist industry. The originality of this research stems from making an analysis of the current situation as well as it is a bridge to the future by making suggestions on how future research can be shaped. The key limitation of this research resides on that it focuses on the existing literature and used secondary data. However, it gives directions for the future research which can take place with primary data collection. © 2021 Belias et al

The Greek hotel sector: an analysis of job satisfaction, role conflict and autonomy of Greek employees

The present study examined job satisfaction within the hotel industries from the perspective of ambiguity, role conflict and job autonomy, as well as their interactions. Structurally, the analysis begins with the presentation of the general theoretical framework, followed by the quantitative investigation of the aforementioned relationships and the verification of the research hypotheses. The existence of a negative relationship between role conflict and job ambiguity with job satisfaction, was partially confirmed, whereas role conflict had low, positive relationship with job satisfaction. Furthermore, autonomy did not play a regulatory role in the relationship between conflict and job ambiguity and job satisfaction. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Workplace Conflict, Turnover, and Quality of Services. Case Study in Greek Seasonal Hotels

Seasonality and its impact on staff turnover and conflict within the workplace is one of the most crucial issue that seasonal hotels are called to deal with. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect that workplace conflict and turnovers have on service quality of seasonal hotels in Greece. The outcome of the research indicated that hotel management’s policy in resolving conflicts affects mainly job turnover rather than the frequency of conflicts. In fact, it was found that cooperation strategies are likely to reduce employee turnover through the resolution of conflicts, while enforcement/competition or avoidance strategies enhances the possibility of employee turnover. Finally, it was found that service quality was not related to either the intention to leave or the manifestation of conflicts. © 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Job Satisfaction as Affected by Types of Leadership: A Case Study of Greek Tourism Sector

This paper investigates the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction of hotel employees working on non-luxury hotels (3/4 star hotels) in Athens, Greece. Although literature suggests that types of leadership affect job satisfaction on hotels, their effects on non-luxurious city hotels are not researched. This research aims to respond to this need, providing data on the influence of types of leadership on job satisfaction in non-luxurious city hotels. The research used a questionnaire that measured the job satisfaction of participants through the Job Satisfaction Survey questionnaire which relies on several dimensions. The analysis demonstrated an overall satisfaction of the participants regarding their workplace and working conditions. Contrary to the luxurious hotels where transformational leadership is clearly perceived by employees, the research results indicated that employees recognize managers’ striving for effective co-operation within the company. This paper will examine the contribution of types of Leadership to Job Satisfaction, shaping the prospects for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of employees in the Tourism Sector. The results of the study confirmed previous findings, according to which certain types of Leadership are positively correlated with Job Satisfaction. This knowledge can greatly improve the management of human resources in the hotel sector. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC