Νικόλαος Κάκκος

The contemporary cultural environment makes urgent the strengthening and the adjustment of production structures and supply of art and culture. It is certainly depending on the individual involvement, the evolution of the economic and social conditions, the requirements and the expectations for which the effective exercise of the cultural policy of each Member presents an outstanding priority consideration. It seeks that the produced cultural products have high quality and competitive nature, able to attract the interest of the public. In this context we should unavoidably takes into consideration the activities of the cultural enterprises, they are required to preserve their viability, to renew the productive operational practices and to meet the high cultural requirements of the area in which they are active. A typical case study of one of the most important cultural organization of Karditsa Municipality is the Municipal Cultural and Public Benefit Enterprise of Karditsa (DI.KE.K.). This organization attempts to outline the cultural environment, to identify the factors that are responsible for the organizations’ production weaknesses and last but not least we are going to propose a formation of a dynamic production network that is expected to ensure a high level of value and produced cultural products which can meet the cultural needs of the public in the local and the regional level.

Tourism development plays a crucial role for the local economy and residents’ quality of life, especially for Greece, a country suffering from financial crisis. The purpose of the paper is to examine attitudes of residents of a capital city at a prefecture of Central Greece that is Chalkida, the capital of Evia Island, toward tourism development. It was selected as it shares several similarities with most destinations of the neighboring region of Thessaly. Factor analysis of scaled items measuring their attitudes resulted in eight tourism-related factors: beneficial economic, social and cultural influences, welfare impacts, economic cultural and social costs of tourism development and community support. Results indicate residents’ expectations from tourism development were not met, as community support toward tourism sector is rather limited. Economic costs of tourism development exert detrimental effects on the welfare of residents, as well as their cultural and social context. In this way, tourism industry lacks community support and as a consequence a rather alienated environment for tourism developments is nurtured. On the contrary, economic benefits are strongly and positively related to welfare, culture benefits, and community support on cultural or historic based tourism. Alike, welfare is associated with social and cultural benefits. Moreover, younger residents are less opting to support tourism development although they share the same perceptions about tourism development with older ones.

The remarkable and multilateral developmental impact and perspective of H.E.Is is widely known. Moreover, the spread of competence and technological innovation should not be a privilege for a few people who have the possibility of acquiring knowledge and skills from the International Academic Institutions. Unfortunately, raw reality remains the same and in order to be reduced, the “conventional” Academic Institutions ought to evolve constantly and develop more remarkable international collaborations in order to be able to exist, operate and contribute to the strongly competitive environment. Based on the above references, the undergraduate course of the Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Business and Economics, of the Technological Educational Institution (T.E.I) of Thessaly is being evaluated through the Benchmarking process as it has been defined by the Hellenic Quality Assurance & Accreditation Agency (H.Q.A), as well as with the standards of other internationally recognized and accredited institutions (e.g. European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education – E.N.Q.A, Chartered Management Institution – C.M.I etc.) in order to detect any deviations that would need specific suggestions and improvement procedures able to make this Department strongly competitive.

This paper builds on the Social Norm Approach (SNA) which emphasises the role of norms in shaping attitudes, intentions and behaviour, in order to ground a socially desired behaviour change favouring, for example sustainability. Indeed, environmental sustainability may be regarded as a collective challenge that can only be achieved if a sufficient number of residents cooperate. Hence, the community plays a crucial role to effect lasting changes towards a more ecocentric behaviour. However, higher levels of awareness and knowledge of environmental issues among the general public have not led to the implementation of actual sustainable practices. This study aims to investigate the association of ecocentric attitude with the costs and benefits of urban tourism development. Drawing from a sample of residents in the city of Larissa (Thessaly region), ecocentric attitude shapes the profile of tourism development, recognising higher economic and social benefits, as well as higher costs on natural and cultural environment.

The present investigation aims to study the feelings of job satisfaction experienced by bank employees in Greece. In addition, it is studied how much the above feelings are affected by several demographic factors, like gender, age, educational level, years of experience in the specific institution, total years of experience and position held in the specific institution. The method which was preferred in the frame of the study was the quantitative research method. The tool which was used for the measurement of job satisfaction was the Employee Satisfaction Inventory, ESI, created by Koustelios, 1991. It included 24 questions, which measure six dimensions of job satisfaction: 1. Working conditions (5 questions), 2. Earnings (4 questions), 3. Promotions (3 questions), 4. Nature of work (4 questions), 5. Immediate superior (4 questions) and 6. The institution as a whole (4 questions) (total Chronbach's α = 0.75). The responses were given in a five-level Likert scale: 1 = I strongly disagree, 5 = I strongly agree. The sample of the present study consisted of 230 employees of Greek banks and credit institutions. The results of the study showed that the feelings of job satisfaction experienced by Greek bank employees occur in quite high levels. Furthermore, it was found that job satisfaction is affected by several demographic characteristics, like age, gender, educational level and position held by the employee. However, further investigation should be carried out in the Greek population, so that the phenomenon of job satisfaction is well studied and promoted.

This study discusses the need of development by a political candidate of an effective election campaign plan which besides the clearly political background will be utilizing organizational and administrative Strategies and Marketing techniques. The exploration of the socio-economic environment constitutes a key dimension of the election campaign while adaption, and thus, the election preparation strategy of the candidate to the newly-formed socio-economic Greek status, appears necessary. Apart from the particular traits of each candidate, emphasis needs to be given to the organizational and administrative Structure of his/her political office, indeed, with a novel perspective based on a flexible Matrix Organization. Finally, communication mechanisms are suggested, aiming at restoring the credibility of political discourse and at attracting voters so that the candidate"s election goal is achieved in the most satisfactory manner.