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The purpose of this study is to explore small firm owners' perceptions of the impact of employee training on small firm competitiveness in the context of Greece.

The research adopts a qualitative orientation. Empirical data were collected from 43 owners of small and micro‐firms operating in various sectors of the Greek manufacturing industry through personal semi‐structured interviews.

The empirical evidence reveals that informal staff training can help Greek small firms face the challenges of the future. More specifically, the interview findings indicated that workplace training can: reduce employee errors in the production process; help small firms to meet skill shortage needs; facilitate the introduction of new technology; and enhance worker employability.

The paper argues that a key challenge for policy makers and employers in this area is to facilitate informal learning within small firms in order to improve firm performance. In the same manner, work‐integrated learning (WIL) seems to have a vital role to play in the performance of Greek small enterprises since WIL programs have the potential to address skills mismatch issues.

The study brings new insights around the benefits of informal staff training and work‐integrated learning for small and micro‐firm performance in the context of a small European country like Greece, where there has been scant research and very limited understanding.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review critically the HRD literature in the small business context in order to identify the main barriers to employee training and learning and recommend ways to overcome them.

The paper highlights the potential barriers to training and learning among small firms, looking at organizational constraints such as lack of time or limited financial resources, as well as negative attitudes towards employee training and its importance for business survival.

The available studies indicate that better access to information on the applicability and usefulness of HRD to small firms can be crucial to overcoming the barriers to skills development that exists among such firms. The analysis suggests that a key challenge for policy makers in this area is to facilitate changes in owner attitudes, improve access to training interventions and create the necessary institutional conditions to encourage SMEs to move to high value‐added trajectories.

SMEs need to invest in innovation to face fierce national and international competition and achieve an above‐average return. This article provides guidance for implementation of innovation practices that may help SMEs to overcome some of the barriers to successful innovation.

The human resource development (HRD) literature has tended to focus on larger organizations in order to develop an understanding of workforce skills development. However, it has been acknowledged that a healthy small business sector is fundamental to every corporate economy. This article helps to explore the HRD processes in these types of organizations.

This paper aims to explore the determinants of training in micro enterprises in the context of Greece in order to understand what stimulates workplace training and learning interventions.

The research is based on interview evidence from 14 owners and nine workers of industrial micro enterprises.

The study reveals that training activities in industrial micro‐firms are significantly affected by the business strategy adopted by micro‐firms, the owner commitment towards employee training and development and the way work is organized.

Future research could be directed at investigating the variables affecting training provision in micro‐firms in the service sector in order to explore the differences that may exist between industrial and service micro‐firms.

The paper argues that a key challenge for policy makers in this area is to facilitate changes in owner attitudes, as well as alter the current institutional framework in order to encourage micro firms to adopt higher value added strategies and consequently improve their training efforts.

The study brings new ideas around the determinants of company training in micro‐enterprises, where there is limited understanding.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the employability skills development efforts of Greek higher education institutions (HEIs) and recommend ways to help them create the employable graduate.

The paper draws on extensive secondary data analysis.

It is revealed that HEIs in Greece have failed, so far, to integrate key skills into their curriculum and as a result graduates are not equipped with a range of skills designed to be of practical value in the world of work. The paper argues that there is an immediate need for policy makers to develop a national policy on key skills in HE, in order to help students secure employment, as well as help domestic firms meet their skill needs.

The paper indicates that the role of HEIs in the country remains undermined. In this context it is suggested that a graduate apprenticeship scheme needs to be developed to prepare graduates for the world of employment and that stand‐alone modules around key skills should be incorporated into each program of study. Additionally, deans, departmental leaders and teaching staff should commit themselves towards skills initiatives and should work towards developing a skills‐based curriculum that would equip students with marketable skills.

The paper informs the existing literature about the employability development efforts of HEIs in the context of an advancing country, where the current understanding is very limited.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the main barriers to employability skills development of ethnic minority students in the context of higher education (HE) in Greece and recommends strategies to help higher education institutions (HEIs) overcome those barriers.

The study draws on a series of in-depth interviews conducted with 20 ethnic minority students and ten “traditional” students studying at three institutions of HE in Greece.

The study shows that there are many barriers facing ethnic minority students in HE including: poor self-esteem; lack of good advice about HE courses; isolation once in HE; discrimination by staff in HE; and unresponsive curriculum to ethnic diversity in HE. In this context, it is argued that there is an immediate need for decision makers in HEIs to develop policies that target ethnic minority students in order to help them secure employment. It is suggested that HEIs should: provide opportunities for students to discuss concerns with teachers and counsellors; address issues of motivation, self-perception and self-efficacy; encourage teaching staff to adopt various teaching methods to accommodate different learning styles; decrease competitive, norm-referenced environments; use multicultural education and counselling techniques and strategies; and provide work placement opportunities.

The paper suggests ways that can help HEIs embrace diversity and promote graduate employability among ethnic minority students in the context of widening participation agenda.

The study fills a significant knowledge gap in the existing literature in relation to the measures that HEIs can take to enhance graduate employability among ethnic minority students particularly in less developed countries like Greece.

The purpose of this study is to propose an approach for assessing sustainability aspect of facility layouts. Activity relationship chart (ARC) is a widely used assistive tool for facility layout design which assesses closeness requirement among all pairs. In a typical ARC, there are six closeness ratings which may be assigned to each pair of departments. Ratings are evaluated by considering a single factor or an overall rating is provided. On the other hand, there may be more than one criterion which has to be evaluated separately and then a fair decision should be taken by considering the relative weight of factors. With this purpose in mind, ARC alternatives are evaluated on the basis of three factors which are environmental aspect, safety concerns and manufacturing efficiency factors by using TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method.

In this paper, more than one ARC alternatives are evaluated by considering environmental, safety and manufacturing efficiency factors. Alternatives are then ranked via TOPSIS. An empirical case study is also presented to validate how effective the proposed model performs.

The TOPSIS method can be successfully used to choose the most sustainable ARC alternative appropriately by the help of experts. The proposed approach can be beneficial to researchers and practitioners for better understanding the ARC evaluation problem from the perspective of sustainability.

The obtained results confirm that the proposed model can assist practitioners in refining their decision processes, particularly in cases where there are many ARC alternatives to be considered.

This is the first time that this method is used in such a context. This study contributes to literature by presenting practical applications of TOPSIS in the ARC assessment field. It should be highlighted that there is no comparable research on the evaluation of ARCs using TOPSIS. Thus, this study fills the gap by providing an analytical approach in this area.