Sustainable Development, COVID-19 and Small Business in Greece: Small Is Not Beautiful (original) (raw)
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in Athens. She was a Member of Parliament for To Potami, a party of the liberal centre in 2015. She has a PhD in Economics on Greek small and medium enterprises and an MPhil in Development Studies from IDS based at the University of Sussex. She has been a visiting professor in New York (CUNY) and Paris (EHESS). She was a Visiting Professor at the LSE and a Visiting Fellow at IDS at Sussex in 2016. Her research interests are SMEs, migration, ageing and gender. She has served as board member of ActionAid Hellas (2004-14), and Solidarity Now (2014-), an NGO active in refugee relief.
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The 2007 global economic crisis has considerably affected most national economies and has changed the operating conditions of businesses. In the geographically uneven mosaic of the crisis effects on the European Union countries, the Greek economy has recorded the most severe impacts, while the country’s small and medium enterprises have been greatly affected. This chapter aims at shedding light on the developments in the Greek economy since 2007, focusing on the analysis of the effects of the global economic crisis on the Greek small and medium companies and their underlying reasons. It describes the features of these firms and identifies their position within the Greek political economy in order to analyse meticulously the effects of the crisis. The research goal was achieved on the basis of the original data gathered in the fieldwork, by qualitatively examining the way the crisis affected 103 Greek small and medium enterprises.
Measuring the importance of SMEs to the national economy: The case of Greece.
e-Journal of Science and Technology (e-JST), 2021
Entrepreneurship has been widely acknowledged as a crucial factor for economic development. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a key role in national economies as in most countries they represent the majority of the enterprises. Despite the fact that there is no common definition across the world about SMEs, it is widely recognized that they create jobs and significantly contribute to the creation of added value both in national economies and further in wider economies such as the European Union's internal market. Such recognition is a fundamental step to justify State's intervention through the appropriate public policies. In countries like Greece which is characterized by its limited national market and economy in terms of size compared to other developed European countries, SMEs are vast majority and play a substantial role to the creation of national income and employment and the accomplishment of social coherence. By analyzing data about SMEs in Greece both overall and by selected sectors, this article presents the evolution of SMEs by size and industry in the critical decade 2008-2017 in Greece. Moreover, it highlights their determinant role in the national economy, while pointing out the need for the design of targeted public policies to support entrepreneurship and SMEs by size and sector to overcome the barriers they have faced during the economic crisis of such period. (e-Journal of Science & Technology - "e-JST", issue 2, vol. 16, 2021, ISSN 17905613, http://ejst.uniwa.gr/eksintaennea.html) .
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Knowledge E, 2020
Back in 2008, when the global economic crisis started, Greek companies and generally the corporate sector faced numerous difficulties. A lot of businesses closed, and the unemployment rate was significantly raised. The aim of the following paper is attempting to study the current situation of entrepreneurship in Greece, to find the problems that arose from the crisis and to acknowledge any future chance of positive development. Our results from the conduction of the two surveys have indicated that the entrepreneurs who answered our survey are facing a lot of problems in extroversion, due to the high taxation and the general market crisis. Also, only half of them had any advisory support at the beginning of their business. Similarly, their answers showed that it is more possible for them to close their business soon, as they are more pessimistic for better conditions and environment in entrepreneurship, in the near future. On the other hand, the results for the non-entrepreneurs, who answered our second survey, showed that a lot of them were in favor of making a company but they hesitate because of the taxation system, the bureaucracy and the lack of knowledge in business sector. The key to making entrepreneurship in Greece approachable is to rebuild the tax system and make it more sustainable for the businesses. Similarly, it is important to have financing support through private and public initiatives and help new innovative businesses and startups begin operations. Lastly, Greek Government must make a new proactive environment to protect all low and middle range businesses from terminating their operation.