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The scope of this chapter is to examine the impact of CER related performance on firms’ systematic risk, by controlling for potential endogeneity between CER and systematic risk and by distinguishing sample firms between common law and code law countries, evidenced as significant factors for the inconsistency of empirical results by previous studies. Empirical results indicated that CER performance provides a negative and significant impact on firm systematic risk (beta) verifying existing evidence on the literature that CER investments reduce the firm’s systematic risk, so leading us to accept the risk reduction hypothesis. In addition, firms with more stakeholder oriented CER activities are associated with more risk aversion and ethical behavior, especially towards its employees and the environment, thus perceived as having less uncertainty and risk, so investors require a smaller risk premium to invest in such corporations. Moreover, after separating sample firms based on their country’s legal origin we found that CER performing firms in common law countries are associated with higher systematic risk.

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 scope of this chapter is to examine the impact of R&D investments (capitalized R&D) on the CER-CFP association as argued by previous studies on the field, while taking into consideration potential endogeneity between the examined factors. We respond to the call for more research on the topic by covering a large multi-country sample of developed economies, and of listed and unlisted European firms over a long period of time and also by considering the bidirectional association between CER and CFP while controlling for R&D capitalization instead of R&D expenses utilized in previous studies. Empirical analysis suggested that more profitable firms are associated with more CER related performance. However, the R&D and its interaction with ROE yield insignificant coefficients in both model estimations leading us to accept the substitution hypothesis. This result corroborates arguments in the literature that less innovative firms resort to increased CER activities in order to gain market differentiation (or competitive advantages) and enhance their financial performance.

This paper studies the firm-specific determinants of capital structure during the period of debt crisis utilizing panel data of 120 Greek hotel firms during the period of 2003–2016. A random effect panel regression analysis was performed on firm-specific determinants of capital structure before (2003–2010) and after (2011–2016) the Greek sovereign debt crisis. This study tests the efficiency of trade-off theory and pecking order theory, finding that asset tangibility is directly and positively related to total leverage and long-term leverage especially during the debt crisis period, while non-debt tax shields and tax payments are negatively and significantly impacting total leverage for both sub-periods. Finally, growth opportunities seem to have a differential impact on both total and long-term leverage between the pre- and post-crisis periods. Specifically, firms with high growth opportunities were associated with lower long-term and total leverage after the crisis suggesting a reduction of growth firms’ debt exposure during that period. This is the first study in the literature considering a vast sample of non-listed hotel firms and utilizing a sample period before the Greek sovereign debt crisis; thus, we are able to extract more efficient inferences regarding the impact of firm-specific determinants on the capital structure of hotel corporations.

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 this study is to examine the impact of board gender diversity on corporate cash-holding decisions within the European sport and leisure sector. A sample of 125 unique firms was selected for the period from 2008 to 2019, and analysis was performed using panel fixed-effects regressions. Empirical evidence documented that the higher the number of women serving on the board of directors, the higher the level of cash the firm holds. This result is attributed to the critical mass theory of governance, suggesting that boards having at least two women directors are associated with higher cash holdings compared to firms with one or no women directors. Additionally, gender diversity leads to increased cash holdings for firms with lower governance quality, suggesting that women on boards perform a monitoring role within those firms with the most severe agency problems. The results remain robust after several sensitivity tests controlling for potential endogeneity among the variables and the model’s functional form.

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 purpose of this research is to study expectations regarding ageing (ERA) among individuals who participate in running events as well as to explore personality and demographic features as potential variables that influence ERA values. A quantitative questionnaire was selected as the predominant means of collecting the data and 196 successfully completed questionnaires were analyzed by means of the SPSS. Results indicate a positive correlation between ERA values and Change Seeker Index in our sample. Moreover gender and frequency of exercise found to have no significant effect on ERA score. Finally, ERA was examined among three generational cohorts and differences were noticed to physical subscale.

The goal of this study was to examine the predictability and persistence of earnings of the European football clubs and whether the new Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Financial Fair Play (FFP) licensing regulation has forced clubs to produce a more predictable earnings stream. We utilized a sample of 109 European top-tier clubs over the period 2008–2016, summing up to 844 firm-year observations. Empirical evidence indicated that the cash flow component of earnings is more relevant in predicting one-year ahead earnings than accruals. This positive impact of cash flows for predicting earnings is more significant after the FFP regulation since earnings predictability has increased during that period. Moreover, the abovementioned finding is more significant for the smaller league clubs rather than the Big-5 league clubs. This finding is attributed to the fact that smaller league clubs are more in need of UEFA prize money relative to Big-5 league clubs, thus they are more incentivized to produce a more predictable earnings stream.