Human Resource Management

Greece suffers from high unemployment rates, low demand for labour, and a severe problem in creating highly skilled and new technologically-oriented jobs (Karasiotou, 2004; Staikouras, 2004; National Statistical Service of Greece, 2005). These factors precondition the Greek market to limited investment and expansion opportunities (Eurostat, 2008), while firms are characterized by their small size: 54.6 per cent of all registered firms are owner-only and 43.7 per cent employ between one and ten employees, while large organizations (250+ employees) only account for a meagre 0.05 per cent of all registered firms in the Greek market (National Statistical Service of Greece, 2002). With an average organizational size of two employees per company, firms in Greece can be characterized as very small in comparison to the EU average (Galanaki and Papalexandris, 2007). However, the Greek economy depends significantly on the operation of micro firms. Micro-firms in Greece account for 59.6 per cent of total employment, compared to an EU-27 average of 29.5 per cent, while the share in total value added to the economy by micro-firms amounts to 38.6 per cent, compared to the EU-27 average of 20.2 per cent (Eurostat, 2008). In addition, since the Greek economic environment is characterized by low levels of government and business efficiency, competitiveness, and attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI), this leads to lower levels of investment and presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the market (see Haritakis and Pitelis, 1998; Joumard and Mylonas, 1999; Staikouras, 2004).