Dimitrios N. Koufopoulos

Board characteristics and involvement in strategic decision making

Purpose – This paper aims to review how corporate governance is institutionalised in Nigeria and examine the relationship between board size, CEOs’ duality, board composition and the boards involvement in strategy.Design/methodology/approach – A structured questionnaire was sent by post to the chairmen of 138 publicly quoted companies in Nigeria in November 2004.Findings – Using primary and secondary data, our results suggest that the Nigerian public companies have embraced some principles of the Code of Best Practices for Public Companies. There is a high level of board involvement in strategy decision‐making process, but no correlation was found between board involvement and a number of governance variables (board size, board independence and CEO duality).Research limitations/implications – The sample of 39 responding companies is small although it represents a 28 per cent of response rate and is representative of the Nigerian stock market. However, we are unable to look at other factors such as indust...

Top management team and corporate performance: a study of Greek firms

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore the role that boards can play in the contribution of organizational performance and to empirically examine the relationship between the chairman, key board composition variables and firm performance.Design/methodology/approach – The data presented are drawn from a sample of 27 chairmen of Greek corporations listed in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The authors examine hypothesized links between the demographic characteristics of the chairmen of the board, board composition variables, and organizational performance.Findings – The authors found a positive relationship between age and competitive positioning which indicates that, the older the chairperson, the better the competitive positioning. Amazingly, the relationship between age and overall firm performance was found to be negative, indicating that even if the chairperson is older and more experienced the possibly efficient performance of the firm does not depend on that.Research limitations/implications – The aut...

Corporate governance and board practices by Greek shipping management companies

Purpose – Corporate governance is an area of interest to researchers, stakeholders and the general public. In recent times, there has been an increased concern about the effectiveness of the board within corporate organizations due to corporate scandals and accounting irregularities of some well known firms, which highlighted the inefficiency of monitoring corporate boards and the overseeing of managerial decision making. This paper aims to investigate the effects that a number of factors such as organisational demography, organisational size, ownership type, board size, CEO duality and CEO dependence/independence have on board configuration.Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews the literature on organisational demography and board structure characteristics. Primary data were gathered from 27 management shipping companies having their head office in Greece.Findings – Findings show high levels of influence of the CEOs on the Board of Directors, since in most cases the CEO is the Chairman of the B...

Corporate governance practices in publicly quoted companies in nigeria

This study evaluates corporate governance issues in publicly quoted companies in Nigeria, which border on board characteristics, composition and roles in strategy development processes, appraisal of directors, as well as relationships between boards and CEO, top management and other stakeholders. The empirical findings of the study reveal useful insights with respect to corporate governance practices in Nigeria. The results show that Nigerian public companies have embraced the principles of good corporate governance, although they are at different levels of adoption of the various corporate governance issues. These companies have medium-sized boards, with majority of them having leadership structures that are characterised by separation of the positions of chairman and CEO. This paper draws a number of conclusions and recommendations and also highlights some limitations that can be improved upon in future studies.

Planning practices in the Greek ocean shipping industry

Purpose – To investigate and portray the nature and use of formal strategic planning in the Greek ocean shipping industry.Design/methodology/approach – Studies carried out in well‐developed industrialised countries, predominantly in the manufacturing sector, have contributed significantly to a better understanding and development of the strategic planning field. Nevertheless, there is lack of research based on countries and sectors/industries that are less conventional in nature. The study attempts to shed some light on how shipping management companies (SMC) carried out strategic planning, through a cross‐sectional study based on a random sample of 34 Greek shipping organisations.Findings – The main findings of the study concern the main planning dimensions: planning completeness, formality, internal and external orientation, CEOs involvement, planning horizons and revision frequencies.Research limitations/implications – The study provides a benchmark for the measurement of the development of strategic ...

The Influence of Relational Embeddedness on the Formation and Performance of Social Franchising

This article investigates the novel interorganizational format named social franchising that has emerged as a possible solution to tackle the issues of growth and financial sustainability that social enterprises face, to enhance the alleviation of poverty and of other pressuring social issues, and to address the need of many governments to reduce fiscal deficits. We explore the issue of social franchising through case study analyses of four social franchises active in the United Kingdom from a social network theory perspective and through the argument of embeddedness. The influence of relational embeddedness and its eight core variables were found to play the preeminent role in the formation, partner selection, and performance and were examined. In addition, the study showed that the biggest challenges that social franchisors face are the creation of a straightforward clear model, the training of the partners to a different operationally wise and commercially wise culture, and their ability to focus on supporting the whole network.

Board Characteristics and the Presence of Women on the Board of Directors: The Case of the Greek Shipping Sector

Shipping is a vital sector of the Greek economy. According to the Foundation for Economic & Industrial Research (2013), more than 52 % of the shipping companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the NASDAQ Stock Market (NASDAQ) are owned by Greek nationals. Current demands for transparency in the decision making of the shipping firms, led boards to take various initiatives so as to comply with international regulations. This article attempts to discuss the findings of the Hellenic Observatory of Corporate Governance (HOCG) about the Board Characteristics (CEO duality, Board size, Independent Directors, cross directorships, tenure, age and gender) of the Greek-owned public shipping companies which are listed in foreign Stock Exchanges for the period 2001–2012. Special emphasis is given on the presence of Women on the Board of Directors. Possible reasons why women’s access to board seats has been limited are discussed, and some practical suggestions to the Shipping owners to consider adding qualified women to the board are presented.

Board and organisational performance in healthcare non-profit public organisations: the Greek perspective

The performance of healthcare non-profit public organisations is an important factor that can affect the quality of healthcare provision. This study attempts to investigate how board attributes affect board and organisational performance. Furthermore, it explores how dimensions of board effectiveness are related to organisational performance. In order to achieve these goals, survey questionnaires were sent to 120 CEOs of Greek public hospitals and 34 usable responses were received. The findings show some clear relationships between board attributes, board performance and some aspects of organisational performance.

The influence of the relational marketing paradigm on the governance structure of the novel channel format named social franchising: an explorative qualitative analyses of four social franchises from the UK

This paper explores the influence of the relational paradigm on the governance structure and performance the novel interorganisational format named social franchising which has emerged as a channel strategy to tackle the issues of growth and financial sustainability that social enterprises face, to enhance the alleviation of poverty and to address the need to reduce fiscal deficits and to satisfy social needs. We explore the issue of social franchising through case study analyses of four social franchises active in the UK from a social network theory perspective. We collected data through face to face semi-structured interviews from the owners of the Social Franchisor. We coded behaviour of actors on the four constructs of governance and performance into eight relational norms and classified outcomes as levels of relational embeddedness. Propositions were developed to explain the outcome of each behaviour. Our findings indicate that relational embeddedness plays the preeminent role in the design of the governance structure and the performance of social franchises. We learn that the biggest challenges that social franchisors face are: the creation of a straightforward clear model, the training of the partners to a different operationally-wise and commercially-wise culture, and their ability to focus on supporting the whole network.

Organisational Behaviour in Shipping

The aim of this chapter is to provide a discussion of critical aspects of organisational behaviour with particular reference to those that are significantly important in the shipping industry. All these aspects are fundamental as they determine the existence, operation and success of the companies that are being studied for more than half a century. Specifically, the discussion will first focus on issues of organisational structure, placing emphasis on the top management and governance of the organisations. In today’s globalised and turbulent maritime industry environment, overseeing the operations and decision-making of top leaders of shipping companies is critical, especially with the current and prolonged global financial crisis in place.