The Environmental Strategy of Businesses as an Option under Recession in Greece

Abstract

In recent years and mostly during the last two decades, the decisive role of the environment in the business administration field and business life in general has emerged. In the modern, fast changing, and highly competitive business environment, and even more so in the context of the recent economic crisis, businesses constantly struggle to survive, trying to resolve problems and improve their performance and competitive advantage. Therefore, they must save and invest substantial sums of money to build strong infrastructure, to change procedures, and to produce environmentally friendly products. In view of the above, the current study attempted to examine the impact of environmental strategy on the growth of medium and large enterprises in all sectors in Greece, in a period of economic crisis. The study, carried out in February and March 2018, confirmed the positive correlation and the critical role of environmental strategy in the financial performance of Greek enterprises during this period of economic recession. Both eco-efficient practices and innovative practices lead to the creation of competitive advantage and, thus, to the improvement of the financial performance of a firm.

Environmental Innovation, Open Innovation Dynamics and Competitive Advantage of Medium and Large-Sized Firms

“…Another reason for this rate is that as in similar cases participants are very interested for the research. In similar cases concerning either Greece [54,74] or other countries [70,75,76], the response rate is between 15% and 35%.…”

“…Concerning the research design, it should be noted that competitive advantage measurement based on firms' environmental strategy is not easy, as there are no data available for individual firms [54,55,60,66,67]. Especially concerning the case of Greece, the literature shows that there are not still available many quantitative data [16,17,30].…”

“…Especially concerning the case of Greece, the literature shows that there are not still available many quantitative data [16,17,30]. Thus, due to the lack of quantitative data, the research was based on firms' self-assessment as in many other similar cases [54,55,60,66,67]. In order to obtain the needed data, a 7-point Likert scale questionnaire was developed.…”

“…Furthermore, the possibility of selection error was low as we used Hellastat's IMENTOR which is a reliable database and we have used the above-mentioned specific selection criteria; thus, there is a convergence between the target population and the sample. Last, in order to examine the possibility of non-response error, we have used the method of Armstrong and Overton [79] as suggested by other authors as well [54]. Thus, we have tested the existence of statically significant differences between the first and the last 30 questionnaires using the Mann-Whitney U test given the ordinal nature of the variables.…”

“…A more recent study [54] has revealed that even during an economic crisis, environmental innovation can lead firms' competitive capability. Furthermore, the authors found that even in financially turbulent times medium and large-sized firms can integrate environmental innovation into their corporate strategy, a practice that is positively correlated with their competitive capability [54].…”