Athanassios Mihiotis

E-banking: challenges and opportunities in the Greek banking sector

Internet technologies have a great potential for changing fundamentally the banks and the banking industry. The opportunities, which the e-banking services and technologies offer to the banking sector in order to fulfil existing customer needs and to attract new prospective customers, are the driving forces for banks in order to design, develop and operate their own e-banking systems. This paper examines the challenges and opportunities of e-banking for the Greek banking sector, during the e-commerce era, and also presents the results of a survey of banking executives working at banks offering e-banking services. The main findings demonstrate that banks expand to e-banking services in order to remain competitive, to keep track with technological developments and to benefit from the lower cost of e-banking transactions. The major problems they face are the low response rate from customers and the implementation of security and data protection mechanisms. The relatively low Internet usage, the non-familiarity with technologically advanced devices and problems regarding security and privacy are the main factors that have a negative influence on the adoption of e-banking services by customers in Greece.

The contribution of records management to good governance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the relationship between records management (RM) and accountable and efficient governance.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the required framework and the prerequisites for planning and implementing an effective and efficient RM system are presented and a literature review and empirical studies are used to depict the interaction between good governance and RM.Findings – The following conclusions are derived from the bibliographic data analysis. Specific training by RM professionals for recordkeeping is useful for public servants. All levels of the administrative chain should be trained and involved in RM processes. Good governance, information security and RM are all deeply connected. The tendency of regarding archives only as cultural thesaurus or valuable historical resources and not also as products and assets of their originating organizations has to be abandoned. Electronic RM and preservation is a complex matter that requires interdiscipli...

A methodology for analyzing shipyard supply chains and supplier selection

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on shipyard supply chains in order to identify the processes that take place and evaluate the risks associated with suppliers. Design/methodology/approach – For this analysis two methodologies are applied. The first is the understand, document, simplify, optimize, where the first two steps are used for analysing the processes and the documentation of the best practices, which take place in the daily operations. The second tool is Kraljic’s matrix, which is applied for the identification of supplier selection and associated risks. Findings – The analysis shows that strategic co-operations between shipyards suppliers are essential for improved supply chain performance since supplier improvement in terms of lead times and product quality are achieved. It is also seen that the shipyard supply chain performance can be improved by adjusting the best practices to the needs dictated each time by the project’s specifications. Practical implications – The findings pro...

Freight forwarding in Greece: Services provided and choice criteria

Freight forwarders are intermediary companies involved in Logistics. Their task is to manage all functions involved in transport after the buy process of merchandise is complete. The main objectives of the present work are to evaluate the criteria on which production companies choose particular freight forwarders, to point out the elements that affect quality and to differentiate services provided in various customer categories. In addition, this work presents the characteristics of freight forwarding companies that are active in the Greek market, analyzing their field of specialisation regarding various services and the profile of their manpower, as well as measuring the level of information technology usage in their operations. For the aim of this work, a questionnaire was drawn up and sent to a sample of 98 companies of the sector, selected mainly for their size and their location. Twenty‐four questionnaires were returned, covering roughly 10% of the companies in the market. The companies were asked to...

A three dimensional knowledge management framework for hospitality and tourism

Purpose – In pursuit of an alternative competitive strategy for tourisms underperformers and particularly for niche markets such as tourist destination islands, this paper aims to introduce a framework that caters to the post‐modern tourist.Design/methodology/approach – Through a pilot study, the framework was introduced to senior hotel managers on the island of Crete. The framework explores how hotel managers can best use their employees’ knowledge in order to increase their market adaptability and develop unique capabilities.Findings – The results demonstrated that managers scored highly in their ability to leverage knowledge gained from the market, whereas they gave less importance to their employees’ valuable, internal knowledge. In the majority of cases tested, senior managers lacked an overall knowledge strategy. Although the pilot studys findings cannot be generalized, they can help us anticipate the maturity levels of hotel managers towards knowledge management and contribute towards building a ...

Coaching: from challenge to opportunity

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present coaching opportunities and applications in the workplace as well as to point out that organizations that want to leverage the benefits of coaching must be mature enough to have certain processes and practices in place. A further purpose of this paper is to gain some insight regarding several critical success factors are not well understood by organizations and to identify possible areas for improvement for them. Design/methodology/approach – The authors first presents the environment in which coaching was developed, from which disciplines was it affected, and how it was shaped into its current form. Then the authors focus on coaching used as a business development tool and critical factors that play an important role in the effectiveness of coaching from the organizations’ side are presented. The paper ends with some qualitative conclusions. Findings – The value that organizations realize form coaching is proportional to the quality of coaching delivered. ...

Value Chain Analysis: an ECR tool for assessing business competitive advantage

The goal of Value Chain Analysis (VCA), as a strategic tool, is to facilitate and speed up the application of Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) principles and methods. VCA methodology is applied keeping in mind the trends of a new era in the relationship between suppliers-producers-wholesalers and retailers. VCA approaches define current costs and performance, and assess the potential impact of proposed ECR improvement concepts across the entire supply chain. In this paper, the basic VCA approaches are described and compared with each other.

Coaching and the Greek market

Coaching is an excellent developmental tool that is increasingly gaining ground within organisations. To date, several studies have been conducted to determine the organisation-dependent factors that affect coaching and the quality of the result. This paper aims to examine the practices of organisations in Greece with respect to these factors, in order to identify possible points where companies in Greece need improvement and additional enlightenment on the topic of coaching. The research conducted is qualitative and was carried out on professional coaches who met definite criteria. According to the results of this research, companies in Greece often use coaching with incorrect motives and/or in a way that is negative; exhibit problems in their communication regarding coaching; rarely have specific standards criteria in choosing professionals to collaborate with (coaches); and often, in practice, do not measure the results of coaching.

Crisis management for secondary education: a survey of secondary education directors in Greece

Purpose – The Greek secondary education system lacks a formal crisis management system. The purpose of this paper is to address this problem as follows: elicit current crisis management practices, outline features for designing a formal crisis management system in Greece. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on a survey conducted with the directors of secondary education and the interpretation of the survey results. Due to the echelon structure of secondary education the directors are experienced educators with plenty of experience. They are in a unique setting to be able to combine the managerial perspective with field experience, both of which are important for managing crises. Findings – First, events of sociopolitical nature are considered as important crisis triggers. Second, there is tendency to expect extended involvement of the state. Third despite the lack of a formal system, current practices are relevant and tend to mimic formal systems. Research limitations/implications – In pra...

Managing information flow: an important factor in the implementation process of project management

Planning and implementation of a project is considered to be a rather complicated process with a number of components that extend to economic consequences (positive or negative), as much for the contractor company as for the owner of the project itself. One of the key issues in the beginning of the project, and also during its implementation process, is to secure the existence of a reliable information system. The reliability of that information system and the co-existence of an efficient decision-making system are considered to be the most important factors of maintaining quality in project management. This paper presents the basic parameters of such an effective and proper information management system involved in the project management process.