Kostas Tsekouras

Adoption of a quality assurance scheme and its effect on firm performance: A study of Greek firms implementing ISO 9000

An analysis of 143 firms in the Greek manufacturing and service sectors reveals that adopters of ISO 9000 quality assurance schemes are larger companies producing intermediate goods, but less profitable and with higher leverage than their non-adopter counterparts. The effects of adopting an ISO 9000 scheme on firm performance and especially on certain dimensions of profitability are not significant in a period of 5-6 years after adoption. Evidence suggests that the adoption of an ISO 9000 quality assurance scheme, being a continuous process of improvement, is beneficial in the long term and does not necessarily improve financial ratios in the short term. Active support policies for the promotion and dissemination of quality standards in the manufacturing and service sectors of Greece can be reconsidered and a more targeted policy should be implemented. Future research may be designed and implemented so that long-term and strategic effects of the adoption of the new ISO 9000:2000 standards are revealed.

Strategic orientation and financial performance of firms implementing ISO 9000

The ISO 9000 scheme has been reproved for being a paper driven process with little if no impact on firm performance. As international scientific literature indicates a wide range of factors leading to the adoption of the ISO 9000 schemes, the impact of this adoption should be viewed and examined in a framework of the firms’ strategic orientation. A sample of Greek businesses that adopted the ISO 9000 scheme in the early 1990s is classified into three categories of strategic orientation, namely cost leadership, market differentiation and focus strategy. If all the firms are pooled together, there is no significant difference in their financial performance indicators after a period of six years following the adoption of ISO 9000. However, if the firms are examined separately and according to their strategic orientation, those firms pursuing a cost leadership strategy present statistically significant growth of financial profitability indicators, while those firms pursuing a market differentiation strategy present statistically significant growth of their turnover and market share. Thus, strategic orientation is a moderating factor influencing the relationship between registration to a quality scheme such as the ISO 9000 scheme, and the firms financial performance.

The effects of ISO 9001 on firms' productive efficiency

Purpose – This work sets out to explore the effects of ISO 9001 on productive efficiency of firms.Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 1,572 firms from three Greek manufacturing industries is used for empirical work. The firms are from the food and beverages industries, the machineries industries as well as from the electrical and electronics appliances manufacturing industries and include both adopters and non‐adopters of ISO 9001. A stochastic frontier methodological approach is adopted and the effects of ISO 9001 can be modeled in four ways: as a managerial input alongside the conventional inputs of capital and labor, as a factor affecting technical inefficiency, as an input and a factor affecting technical inefficiency and as having no effect at all.Findings – ISO 9001 operates as a factor affecting technical inefficiency with non‐neutral effects on capital and labor. The combined effect of ISO 9001 with capital increases the level of technical inefficiency reflecting adjustment costs incurred wh...

The Effects of Regional Capital Subsidies on Productivity Growth: A Case Study of the Greek Food and Beverage Manufacturing Industry*

Capital subsidies form a major instrument of industrial and regional policy for economically developed countries all over the world, including many European Union and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. Research findings have challenged the effectiveness of capital subsidies in assisting productivity growth. This paper treats capital subsidies as a new input and estimates a stochastic production frontier that is not bound by the restrictions imposed by approaches used in previous research works. It is shown that capital subsidies affect total factor productivity growth through technical change and not through scale efficiency, while the disadvantaged location of firms affects technical efficiency.

The impacts of regulated notions of quality on farm efficiency: A DEA application

Recent European Union policy has attempted to regulate agricultural quality production through schemes that either place emphasis on the physical properties and the geographical zone of production of denominated products or on methods and processes of production of organic products. This paper attempts to examine the effects of these two distinct regulated notions of quality on farm efficiency, by estimating efficiency scores using data envelopment analysis (DEA) on a sample of Greek black currant producers who either employ conventional methods of production or organic methods, and who are located either inside or outside a denominated zone of quality production. Findings indicate that the location of the farm significantly affects the technical and scale efficiency scores in the sample of conventional producers, while it does not have any statistically significant effect in the sample of organic farmers. Thus, regulating quality in terms of organic production weakens the effectiveness of regulating quality in terms of the geographical area and denomination of production. Due to these conflicting impacts of quality policy on farm efficiency, the incentives for the cultivation of organic products should apply only outside the denominated areas of quality production.

Promoting energy efficiency policies over the information barrier

Stakeholders argue that the information barrier is the major obstacle restricting firms from adopting Energy Efficiency Technologies (EETs) in Europe. The present work examines the processes of information gathering as regards to EETs and explores the factors affecting the level of acquired information by EET adopters. Empirical evidence is provided by a data set of Greek manufacturing firms which have adopted EETs. In conclusion, we propose appropriate policy measures able to promote the adoption of EETs by overcoming the information barrier.

Malmquist productivity index estimation with zero-value variables: The case of Greek prefectural training councils

Abstract The paper suggests a technique for the parametric estimation of the Malmquist productivity growth index when the dataset to be analyzed contains a considerable number of observations with zero values. A dummy variable technique suggested by Battese (J. Agric. Econom. 48 (1997) 250) is extended to a translog specification of the input distance function. Moreover, technical changes (TCs) are decomposed into neutral and biased components and the sources of total productivity growth are computed via formulae explicitly accounting for the discrete nature of the data. Our approach has been applied to the Greek prefectural training councils—a state extension system for the general public. Findings indicate a considerably negative productivity growth primarily attributable to regressive TC.

Productive efficiency and exports: an examination of alternative hypotheses for the Greek cement industry

Efficiency loss that is due to over- or under-capacity utilization is a significant factor influencing the exporting activity of firms. Using time series data from the Greek cement industry, it is found that efficiency loss triggers export activities up to a certain threshold where firms se to export in order to reduce the deviation from optimum capacity utilization. Beyond this threshold, the size of efficiency loss becomes a major barrier to export in terms of competitiveness. Thus, both the Self-Selection Hypothesis (SSH) and the well-known Market Selection Hypothesis (MSH) may be in operation for various sizes of efficiency loss.

A cost function of Greek non-ferrous metal industry

Abstract A translog cost function in the form of a third-order series Taylor expansion was used for the estimation of cost in the Greek non-ferrous metal industry which is based on an annual time series for the period 1969–1990 concerning: the price of production factors, the production volume, and the total cost of production. The estimated cost function permit us to have average and marginal cost curves of typical form for each time-point. Also, it is useful for projecting costs and the optimum scale of production under conditions which concern 1. (i) the development of prices, production and product factors and 2. (ii) demand.

Productive performance based on R&D activities of low-tech firms: an antecedent of the decision to export?

We argue that technical efficiency, when R&D stock is considered as a crucial resource, reflects the effectiveness of the underlying firm governance mechanism which transforms competencies into capabilities. We argue that for the case of low-tech R&D active firms (i) their R&D-based productive performance and their decision to export are endogenously related ‘due to self-selection’, (ii) the examined low-tech R&D active firms are dichotomized in two regimes, exporters and non-exporters, and (iii) the role of innovation patterns is a premise in determining low-tech firms’ R&D-based productive performance and export decision-making. We provide empirical evidence on the above hypotheses exploiting information from a unique data set regarding Greek low-tech R&D active manufacturing firms and adopting bootstrap data envelopment analysis techniques as well as an appropriate endogenous switching regressions, of the Mover–Stayer type, econometric model.