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Weak Sustainable Development Trajectories and Evolving Organisational Physiologies: Empirical Evidence from Greece

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the physiological transformation of small firms in a less developed regional business ecosystem facing multiple development problems, barriers, and inadequacies. We present four field surveys we recently conducted in the peripheral Greek region of Eastern Macedonia–Thrace, on a sample of 230 small entrepreneurs, exploring their perception of the following conceptual triangles: (a) Crisis–Innovation–Change Management, (b) Strategy–Technology–Management, and (c) Human Resource Management–Education and Training–Innovation. We conclude that the sample firms exhibit symptoms of monad-centric business structuring and perceptual-functional weaknesses, which are due to their “traditional” physiology. These comparative weaknesses seem structurally and bi-directionally linked to the low competitiveness of this regional socioeconomic system.

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Change history

  • 29 February 2024

    A correction has been published.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Nevertheless, there were some exceptional cases of companies that deserve mention. We merely examined the apparent trends for most firms, focusing on less dynamic micro-businesses in the tertiary sector. However, by distributing the same questionnaires to more dynamic exporting firms (some employing more than 250 employees; cf. SEVE, 2018), we saw the distance between less and more developed firms in the REMTh. We also observed that even massive or flexible firms could have monad-centred elements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Democritus University of Thrace, Komotini, Greece

    Dimos Chatzinikolaou & Charis Vlados

  2. School of Business, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Charis Vlados

  3. School of Social Sciences, Business & Organisation, Administration, Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece

    Charis Vlados

Authors
  1. Dimos Chatzinikolaou
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Correspondence to Charis Vlados .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, School of Business, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Demetris Vrontis

  2. GNOSIS Mediterranean Institute for Management Science, School of Business, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Alkis Thrassou

  3. Department of Management, School of Business, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Leonidas Efthymiou

  4. School of Business Administration, Research Unit, College of Management, Rishon LeZion, Israel

    Yaakov Weber

  5. Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

    S. M. Riad Shams

  6. Nicosia, Cyprus

    Evangelos Tsoukatos

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Chatzinikolaou, D., Vlados, C. (2023). Weak Sustainable Development Trajectories and Evolving Organisational Physiologies: Empirical Evidence from Greece. In: Vrontis, D., Thrassou, A., Efthymiou, L., Weber, Y., Shams, S.M.R., Tsoukatos, E. (eds) Business for Sustainability, Volume I. Palgrave Studies in Cross-disciplinary Business Research, In Association with EuroMed Academy of Business. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37361-9_10

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