Konstantinos Varsanis

Integrating Total Quality Management Philosophy in the Greek Tourism Sector

Tourism sector is currently facing challenges due to the fast paced environment, the changes that it needs to keep up with and the financial crisis as well. Within a highly demanding framework the needs for high standards and total quality management arises. Organizations that are related to tourism need to introduce a philosophy of sustainability by developing innovative practices that will enable them to reserve their competitive advantage. Therefore, total quality management can be a useful tool in improving their products and services by focusing in quality parameters.

The Role of Organizational Culture in the Greek Higher Tourism Quality

Organizational culture is considered to be important, if not essential, in all industries and businesses nowadays. Every company has its own unique personality, just like people do. This unique personality of an organization refers to its culture. In order to become more effective, organizations have realized how important is the role of their culture and the critical effects it has especially within the tourism industry. The quality of the services and products is affected to a high extent.

Tourism Education in Greece: Development or Degradation?

The importance of Greek tourism for both the economy and the society has been widely discussed in the relevant literature. It has also been acknowledged that tourism education significantly affects the quality of the services offered and as a result, influences competitiveness in the global market.

Social Media and Tourism: A Digital Investment for Thessaly?

The development of social media has been reported to have reshaped the tourism industry, as in general revolutionary information and communication technologies have deeply affected the society and its overall functioning. Facebook and Tripadvisor are two of the applications mostly discussed that do have an important impact on the image of the companies associated with the sector.

Exploring Insurance Fraud and Tourists’ Misbehaviour

Fraud affects every type of insurance, whether it is life or non-life insurance. According to Insurance Europe publications, insurance fraud includes providing untruthful or incomplete information in applications for insurance compensation, submitting a claim for a loss based on misleading or untruthful circumstances, including exaggerating a genuine claim; and otherwise being misleading or untruthful in dealings with an insurer, with the intention of gaining a benefit under the insurance contract. Insurance fraud may be committed by the policyholder or by a third party claiming against an insurance policy. It can range from opportunistic claims, through claims for phantom passengers and fictitious injuries in road accidents, to highly organized crime rings. Fraudulent claims and the cost of investigating suspected frauds lead to higher premiums for honest customers. Investigating fraud also has an impact on insurers’ ability to deal with genuine claims quickly. Some resorts in Greece, such as Faliraki and Kavos, have developed a reputation as been places where tourists, mostly British, are often raped from drunken tourists or even from locals. Someone could claim that those are destinations where alcohol and violence can have very negative effects. However, there is also the case of insurance fraud. This research is going to take a deep look not only on the existing theory on insurance fraud, but also on cases which have been on media. Indeed, there is a series of cases where tourists have made claims for been rapped? However, the investigation made from the insurance firms has concluded that no rape has occurred; in most cases the tourists just aimed at the refund given from the insurance company for the case of a rape. Our literature review and secondary research, suggests that there are indeed many cases of this kind of fraud. However, during the past years the insurance firms are on alert and able to reveal many cases of insurance fraud; which has in turn also reduced the cases of persons asking claims from the insurance firms for rapes. Actually, the dramatic fall on the claims from tourists, who claim that they have been raped, is an indication that the increased level of inspections made from the insurance companies have been effective against fraudulent insurance claims.

The Unethical Practice of Hotel Review Ghost-Writers

Business ethics is a field of applied ethics that examines ethical issues that arise in a business environment. Business ethics includes five kinds of activities. The most dominant activity is the analysis of immorality incidents in business. The second type entails the empirical study of business practices while the third type consists of clarifying basic terms and revealing ethical business issues. The forth kind of activity concerns meta-ethical questions and a review of ethics theory. Finally, the fifth kind aims at the resolution of embedded problems. Ethics is a key issue for many industries, including the tourist industry. One of the key issues that has emerged during the past years, is ghost-writing in the tourism sector. Ghost-writer are those who are hired to author books, manuscripts, screenplays, speeches, articles, blog posts, stories, reports, whitepapers, or other texts, officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, participants in news stories, and political leaders, often hire ghost-writers to draft or edit autobiographies, memoirs, magazine articles, or other written material. In music, ghost-writers are often employed to write songs, lyrics and instrumental pieces. Screenplay authors can also use ghost-writers to either edit or rewrite their scripts and improve them. In tourism, ghost-writers employed by hotels for two reasons. The first one is to write a positive review for the hotel and post it on social media, mostly on tripadvisor and similar platform. The second, and arguably worse, case is to write a negative review for a competitor. Both cases are considered unethical, though the latter constitutes a very harmful misconduct. The emergence of ghost-writers has alarmed not only the sector but also social media platform providers. For this reason, some measures have been taken. For example, booking.com requires that reviewers have actually booked a room and that the booking process done through their website. There are having been many cases of ghost-writing, which have undermined the value of TripAdvisor and of other web sites. In some cases, the website has been forced to publicly apologise to their customer or the businesses affected from this kind of malpractice. Overall, this is practice which has not been extensively researched and merits further research.

The Role of Organizational Culture in Greek Higher Education Quality

The relationship between organizational culture and effectiveness is established in the literature. This study provides insight into the role of organizational culture viewed in the context of quality management in higher education in Greece. Considering the market forces of competition and socioeconomic conditions, the political context and students’ learning experiences and expectations, it is legitimate to apply the marketing paradigm in tertiary education. It appears that due to the impact of economic recession on higher education and the difficulty to accept and implement quality assurance practices in Greece, transformation of the existing organizational culture in higher education institutions is perceived to be the means for quality assurance systems to be accommodated in Greek higher education.

Personal Characteristics and Job Satisfaction of Greek Banking Employees

The purpose of the study was to explore the levels of job satisfaction of Greek employees and to examine the effects that specific personal characteristics have on these levels of job satisfaction. The sample consisted of 252 (51.7 %) males and 235 (48.3 %) females of different bank organizations. The results of the present study suggest that in general Greek bank employees are enough satisfied with their job in general. Moreover, MANOVA and post-ANOVA analysis have concluded that specific personal characteristics of the bank employees affect different aspects of their job satisfaction and their levels of job satisfaction in total such as gender, age, marital status, educational level, and the position that they hold in the bank. Also, the years of their general experience as bank employees, the years that they have been working in the specific institution and the years that they have been working in the same position affect their job satisfaction in a statistically significant way.

Personal Characteristics and Organizational Culture of Greek Banking Employees

The purpose of the study is to examine the Greek bank employees’ attitudes about the present organizational culture of the bank where they work and about their desired organizational cultures after 5 years. The sample consisted of 252 (51.7 %) males and 235 (48.3 %) females of different bank organizations. The results of the present study suggest that bank employees think present organizational culture as controlling while at the same time they would prefer more clan and adaptive types of culture in the organization. Also, ANOVA has shown that in terms of the attitudes about the present organizational culture only the variable of years of general experience as bank employees affect their attitudes, with employees with 1–10 years of experience grading the present culture as more hierarchical and less adaptive and participative. As far as desired organizational cultures are concerned men and women state different preferences, administrators would like it to be more hierarchical and new employees would like it more to promote participation and adaptation to the external environment and less orientated to the market.

Integrating Total Quality Management Philosophy in Greek Higher Educational Institutions

In the highly demanding contemporary environment, organizations, and more specifically higher education institutions, are expected to respond to constant changes and financial crises, by developing innovative practices and delivering quality products and services. As quality and innovation are perceived to be sources of competitive advantage, the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) is suggested. The TQM philosophy can be useful for Greek higher educational institutions, improving the quality of services provided.