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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide up-to-date evidence on the net effect of COVID-19 pandemic on international arrivals and occupancy rates in Greece. Analysis and forecasting point out the demand for 2020, and thus yielding more concrete evidence on the pure effect of the pandemic on the tourism industry.Design/methodology/approachMonthly observations from January 2000 to December 2020 were extracted from the Tourist Enterprises Association (SETE) for Athens, Thessaloniki, Kalamata, Rhodes, Mytilene, Santorini, Zante, Kefalonia and Crete. To model and forecast the volatility and the time trend effect of tourist arrivals individually, the study applies the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) (p,d,q) and the error, trend, seasonality (ETS) model.FindingsEmpirical results suggested that Athens, Thessaloniki and Crete were three destinations with the worst losses in international tourist arrivals. Specifically, Athens was expecting to have (without the existence of COVID-19) more than 330,000 tourist arrivals in December 2020 while instead only 73,000 international tourists visited Athens that period. Similarly, Thessaloniki and the island of Crete lost more than 150,000 international visitors during December 2020.Originality/valueThe author’s study adds to a growing number of studies regarding the impact of COVID-19 by incorporating monthly international arrival data and occupancy rate data for the whole 2020 reflecting differences in transportation or vacation choices. Also, the authors operationalized multiple time-series forecasting models (ETS and ARIMA) for reaching more concrete forecasts and estimates on the effect of COVID-19 on the Greek tourism sector.

Two of the most unpredictable uncertainty indices could explain the business and stock price performance of TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) before and after the COVID‐19 pandemic. This pandemic affects business performance and predictability from uncertainty indices. With the second spread of the pandemic, IT industries have been prepared for the high networking bandwidth. Moreover, the bivariate VAR(1)‐GARCH(1,1) model is weaker during the COVID‐19 period. IT outsourcing after the worldwide outbreak of the disease is one of the most thriving enterprises globally. The coronavirus crisis is expected to have an impact on the IT outsourcing industry. Most of the uncertainty indices of these days are built up from news outlets explored in the case study of TCS. Quantitative examination strategies have been utilized to explore the impact of doubt indices in TCS and the residuals if the organization's emergency persists.

Purpose Several theories have been developed trying to explain the corporate decisions on cash holdings. Stakeholder theory is one of the arguments that urge firms with strong stakeholder relationships to hold more cash. The purpose of this paper is to shed further light on this issue by examining the impact of cash holdings on the financial performance and viability of Greek Small-Medium Enterprises before and after the Greek sovereign debt crisis. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected a large sample from Small-Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and a comparable sample from large firms operating in Greece during the period 2003–2016. Panel regression analysis was performed before and after the Greek debt crisis. Findings Results indicated that cash holdings contribute positively to the profitability and viability of firms validating the precautionary theory of cash holdings in Greece. Before the crisis, SMEs and large firms both benefited significantly by cash holdings but after the crisis that positive impact of cash is more evident and significant for SMEs. Practical implications These findings corroborate the hypotheses that during a period of limited lending (and severe financial turmoil); cash holdings (and effective cash management) could be a vital tool for sustaining SMEs’ viability and financial performance. This study offers useful managerial implications and contributes to the ongoing debate about the impact of cash holdings on corporate performance. Originality/value This is the first study in the Greek business setting trying to examine the impact of cash holdings on financial performance within stakeholder-oriented firms during a period of financial turmoil.

The scope of this chapter is to examine the financial, size and governance determinants of CER activities of 7313 listed corporations originating from 24 EU countries over the period 2003–2018. Empirical analysis suggested that profitability, leverage, size and growth opportunities impact positively on the CER and its components, while CEO duality had a negative impact on CER performance. Moreover, the level of CER performance (devotion and engagement) is associated with the existence of a CSR committee within the firm which provides strategic direction and focus on corporate activities. Finally, the separation of the sample firms between code law and common law firms indicated that the aforementioned associations are more significant for code law firms suggesting that countries’ legal system has an impact on corporate decisions regarding CER.

The principal scope of the study was to investigate the Greek four-star hotels’ Web sites persuasiveness. In more detail, this research classifies four-star hotels in Greece in clusters in accordance with their Web sites’ persuasiveness, utilizing latent class segmentation. Six factors of Web site persuasiveness (informativeness, usability, credibility, inspiration, involvement, and reciprocity) were examined in a sample consisted of 404 four-star hotels’ Web sites. The outcomes gathered permit to portray critical contrasts on persuasiveness level demonstrated by the sites. The outcomes of the class cluster analysis proposed that the two-cluster arrangement was the most consistent. The present study gives proof of current Web pages persuasiveness and correspondence and guidance for its advancement in a particular hotel industry.

The present chapter includes a brief theoretical background on CER performance and activities and the main regulatory interventions that have been made from international and European institutions over the last two decades. These interventions and the increased public awareness on the issue of environmental responsibility created a wave of socially and environmentally responsible investments. It is even more comprehensible today than ever before that environmental responsibility does not lead to a waste of scarce corporate resources but on the contrary it can create value for both shareholders and stakeholders, leading to a win-win situation for all related parties. Moreover, the chapter discusses the implications of CER for research in corporate accounting and finance and presents the main research questions that will be addressed in the following chapters of the book.

The scope of this chapter is to examine the impact of CER related activities on their financial performance taking into consideration potential endogeneity between the examined factors and their bidirectional association, evidenced by previous studies on the field. We respond to the call for more research on the topic by covering a large multi-country sample of listed and unlisted European firms over a long period of time and also by considering the bidirectional association between CER and CFP. Empirical analysis suggested that CER generates competitive resources leading to competitive advantages and enhanced financial performance. Also, the specification of our empirical design verifies the bidirectional association between CER and CFP.

The scope of the current chapter is to provide a contemporary literature review on corporate environmental responsibility (CER) by offering a comprehensive theoretical framework and a timeline on its development within the corporate world. Also, the chapter will present a brief discussion on the motivation for firms to adopt CER activities via environmental management tools (EMTs). The final section of the chapter is devoted on discussing the main empirical findings on the literature regarding the association of CER with accounting and financial issues relating to financial performance, innovation, capital structure decisions, firm risk, cash holdings, payout policies and the quality of published accounting information (value relevance, earnings management, and accounting conservatism).

The scope of this chapter is to shed further light on the impact of CER performance and its components on the level of conservative financial reporting by utilizing a multi-country research setting and incorporating various sub-categories of environmental performance and conservatism metrics including the verification of negative earnings, negative cash flows and a firm-specific measure of conservatism (the C-score proposed by Khan and Watts (J Account Econ 48:132–150, 2009)), thus providing more thorough evidence in the existing literature regarding the impact of CER on the conservatism of accounting numbers with the EU. The empirical analysis in this chapter corroborates previous arguments in the literature on the negative association between CER and conservatism.

In recent years, business companies are challenged with various difficulties in connection to human resources (HR), for example, adapting to one’s sentiments, managing debates, developing collaboration, affecting leadership, addressing motives, interpersonal susceptibility, dealing with capabilities and also individual emotional intelligence (EI) or inward characteristics (e.g. moral qualities). Expanding on and reaching out earlier and ongoing work, the scope of this research is to experimentally look at the connection between the components of EI and ethics in contemporary organizations and their resulting impact on employees’ motives and performance. A quantitative method was utilized, and an entirety of 386 questionnaires was collected from three diverse high-tech new businesses based in Greece and analyzed with SPSS programing. For triangulation reasons, auxiliary information from the organizations’ sites were gathered and a meeting with each organization’s executive of the HR division was held. The outcomes propose that ethical values add to motives and thus employee motives add to employee performance. Helpful administrative ramifications resulted from this research.

The aim of this research is to examine sport sponsorship’s effectiveness over the internet. A conceptual framework for sponsorship evaluation over the internet was proposed, incorporating crucial factors such as supporters’ beliefs about sponsorship, their satisfaction form the sport event as well as their degree of sport involvement, the usage of website and social media, awareness of and attitude toward real sponsoring firms and their actual and future purchase intentions concerning sponsors’ goods and services. A quantitative method was used for the purpose of the current research and a total of 3434 questionnaires were successfully completed and analyzed. The empirical results indicated that sponsorship awareness impacts positively and significantly in both actual and intended purchase behavior of the respondents, suggesting that sponsorship awareness is the initial stage of a continuum of fans’ responses that can lead to their purchase intentions and actual purchase. Evidence on this study contributes to the ongoing debate about sponsorship effectiveness and its implication on customer behavior and provides significant implications for managers wishing to improve their future revenues by investing in sponsorship deals, since sponsorship awareness is an important feature that managers must control in order to affect their customers purchasing decisions.

All-inclusive hotels have been evolved as an attractive holiday choice for several travelers due to their ability to provide a relaxed holiday with predetermined costs and full amenities. Previous studies on that specific feature of hospitality firms have examined the motivations of travelers behind that choice, yet there is scarce evidence regarding the satisfaction of all-inclusive visitors and whether income and family size are significant determinants of their satisfaction. The study utilizes a large survey of “all-inclusive” visitors summing up to 1600 questionnaires for the exploration of the factors determining tourists’ satisfaction. This research adjoins the existent bibliography by exploring some additional determinants not examined by previous studies such as the size of the family and the income level of the travelers. Empirical evidence indicated that the factors of convenience and economy of resources were impacting customer satisfaction positively along with previous positive experience of visitors. Nevertheless, empirical evidence seem to differentiate when the impact of income and family size is taken into consideration. Specifically, the previous all-inclusive experience, convenience and economy of resources seem to be highly significant only for families with children while the same factors were insignificant for families without children. Finally, the same factors were highly and positively significant for low income visitors and start to become insignificant when examining the medium and high income groups. These evidence provide useful policy implications for hotel managers which offer all-inclusive packages, in order to improve their services and target adjust their tactic strategically based on customer characteristics.

The aim of the present research is to explore the issue of earnings predictability of a sample of hospitality firms before and after the burst of financial crisis in the Greek economy in 2011. Earnings predictability is considered as a prominent feature of accounting quality and has several implications for investors. For this reason we utilized a sample of organizations registered on the Greek chamber of commerce during the fiscal years 2004–2007 (pre-crisis period) and 2011–2013 (post-crisis period). Those firms were operating on the hospitality and food services sectors, leading to 343 observations for analysis. Regression analysis pointed out that the cash flow component of earnings is a more significant determinant of future earnings relative to accruals. Also the persistence of the cash flow component of earnings has decreased after the burst of the crisis and this is attributed to the lower levels of earnings predictability during that period. Our study adds to the existing literature on earnings predictability and persistence of the hospitality industry, suggesting fruitful policy indications.

The primary objective article was to investigate the websites’ persuasiveness of the luxury hotels in Greece and its implications for their financial performance. As a result, a content analysis was applied primarily as a quantitative research method, with website characteristics classified into distinct categories and then described using statistics; 335 websites of luxury hotels were reviewed and data were analyzed by means of STATA 12. Persuasiveness measured using six dimensions, namely: informativeness, usability, credibility, inspiration, involvement and reciprocity. The research divulged a comparatively low degree of the hotels overall persuasiveness, specifically in involvement dimension. Furthermore, current research attempted to pinpoint the relation among the hotels’ website overall persuasiveness and its impact on their financial performance. The findings could offer the hotel managers useful insights into enhancing their website’s persuasiveness and accordingly their financial performance.

Purpose: The object of this research is to investigate work motivating factors in the public sector in Greece, as well as to study demographic attributes, placing emphasis on age and gender as determinants of employee motives. Design/methodology/approach: To answer our research questions, a questionnaire was distributed at the beginning of 2015 to a public - sector organization in central Greece. A total of 318 anonymous survey responses were collected and analysed with SPSS. Findings: In the public organization under survey, the leading employee motives are an increase in salaries, opportunities for hierarchical advancement in the organization, as well as the development of personal skills. Moreover, motivational differences are noted among Baby Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y. Research limitations/implications: As the present study has been conducted on a single public organization, awareness should be raised as far as the generalizability of the results providing useful insights for further exploration. Originality/value: Limited research has been conducted in the Greek public sector comparing motives among generations.