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The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which the strategic marketing planning process is being used in the Greek professional sports sector and its contribution to clubs' business performance. The research was concentrated on the professional sports sector in Greece and the research hypotheses were investigated through a questionnaire that was delivered to clubs' managing directors and administrative staff. This research showed that strategic marketing planning plays an important role in clubs' business performance. However, this work indicated that strategic marketing planning process is applied to a little extent in the Greek professional sports sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hotel with a sound green image can achieve cost reduction from the use of energy and water, appeal to investors, attract and retain highly motivated employees and cultivate guest loyalty, thereby securing top market share and position. From the other hand, as climate change is expected to affect tourism more than most other economic sectors, it should be in the tourism sector's own interest to make a considerable contribution to emission reductions, even though there is also a clear ethical and moral dimension with regard to the human suffering caused by climate change. This paper shows that hotels use cleaner technologies in their operations in order to attract green consumers and so policy makers need to consider the effectiveness of promoting changes in travel behaviour due to sustainable reasons. Their managers are convinced that the concepts of tourism and environment are interrelated because tourism can’t be developed without the natural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains the recent and predicted changes in quality of life prior to the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. The study seeks to prove the Olympic Games should lead a host city to further development and was conducted through a survey taken by the inhabitants of the Greek capital city. Results reveal that the Athenians believe that there will be future developments and success of the city after hosting the Olympic Games and improve the quality of life for both the inhabitants and the visitors.

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) has been extensively used in manufacturing organisations, service organisations, non-profit organisations, and governmental organisations with outstanding results (Kaplan and Norton, 2001b). Performance measures are at the core of the BSC system. However, financial measurement alone does not reflect the organisational mission of governmental and non-profit organisations; rather the mission of government or non-profit organisation should be placed at top of the BSC in measuring whether such an organisation has been successful. Hence, the greatest difference between businesses and nonprofit organisations lies in the achievement of the mission. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the performance of a University Athletic Department using the balanced scorecard strategic approach which includes four dimensions such as: (a) the customer dimension, (b) the financial dimension, (c) the learning and growth dimension and (d) the internal business process dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this research is the study of text excerpts making a reference to the philosophical views on the human body and soul of Homer, the Orphics, Heraclitus, Pythagoras and Socrates as well as a comparison of the differences between them. The results of the study indicate that the Homeric philosophy is not preoccupied by the soul but by the body. The soul is not attributed immortality and divine origin. The physical hypostasis is the most important thing in earthly life. On the contrary, the Orphics and the Pythagoreans despise the human personality, and human care as a total revolves and is concentrated around the human soul - which includes whatever divine there is in man -- is immortal, survives after the death of the body and comes back to life by entering other bodies. The human body in Heraclitus represents the outside, the tangible pole of men's unity. It is the source of relationships and senses, such as hearing, sight, smell, speech and learning. The body guides common speech and constitutes truth, prudence and wisdom. The soul has to do with the inside and man's speech and thought. The soul in Heraclitus' philosophy discovers man's basic discrimination, man's best and wisdom, which, as self-knowledge, is an utmost virtue because in this way man gets to know himself and common speech; he actually gets to know it theoretically and practically. Thus the discrimination concerns ontology and cosmology, but because research moves rebelliously towards anthropology and self-knowledge, which it regards as the source of cosmogony. For Socrates the soul is composed of the spirit and the moral speech and is the source of all human values. Man's material dimension, that is, his bodily aspect, is spiritualised, and like the soul itself becomes nature. The human hypostasis is not broken to pieces but becomes unified. Finally, by means of this research, it was discovered that the aforementioned philosophers made a real discrimination between the body and the soul; this discrimination is a very important issue in sports pedagogy, because it lays the foundations of man's viewing as a whole, on the basis of the theory of speech, which becomes the centre of this discussion, as a source of movement and an anthropological motive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the age of international competition in today's economy, companies must train their employees and prepare them for jobs in the future. There are many different types and educational approaches in human resource training, but the present study will focus on the Outdoor Management Development (OMD). For better understanding, the particular training method and the core stages of the training process will be examined and the definitions of OMD as an educational tool for management development will be presented. Basic theories and models will be analysed as well as the benefits earned and evaluation concerns about the effectiveness of such training programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic planning is widely used by organisations, as it is an integral part of strategy. The present study tackles the topic of strategic planning as it is developed by public and non-profit organizations and provides an extensive review of literature in the area of the development and role of strategic planning within strategic management and the way it is adopted by public and non-profit organizations. For the purposes of this paper, five models of strategic planning have been discussed with the belief that they describe better the models that can be approached and developed by public and non-profit organizations in the area of sport. This article aims at partly contributing to the theoretical discussion concerning the ability of organizations to integrate and deploy strategic planning. For this study we examined a non-profit sport organization in British Columbia, Canada. The authors propose that public and non-profit sport organizations should develop their own model of strategic planning, which may help them to think and act strategically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the development of a quality culture in a sport organization in the U.S. and Europe. Evaluation of Total Quality Management (TQM); Importance of leadership in implementing TQM; Advantage of TQM organization in sport.

The study's purposes were to (a) determine the extent to which university athletic departments in the United Kingdom use strategic planning, (b) identify key factors discouraging strategic planning, and (c) examine relationships between use of strategic planning and the variables university size and athletic director's background. Of athletic departments studied, 59.5% were strategic planners that wrote long-range plans, assessed external and internal environments, and based strategies on department mission and objectives. The remaining 40.5% were nonstrategic planners using just some components of the strategic planning process, as either users of short-range written plans and budgets, for the current fiscal period; users of unwritten short-range plans maintained in an administrator's memory (intuitive planners); or users of no measurable planning procedures.