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This paper aims to investigate the nature and extent of strategic planning in the Greek hospitality industry and its outcomes based on Greek managers' views.

Although the concept of strategic planning and its dimensions have been widely discussed in previous literature, research has mainly focused on well-developed countries and established sectors. However, there is a limited research in less developed countries like Greece and under-researched sectors like the hospitality industry. This paper aims to give some insights into the nature and extent of use of strategic planning processes and its positive outcomes in the Greek hospitality industry through a study based on a sample of 21 Greek five-star hotels.

The main findings of the paper concern with some major strategic planning dimensions: planning formality, functional coverage, internal and external orientation, centralization and time horizon of planning. Additionally, the study highlights the positive outcomes/benefits of planning according to managers' views, as well as the financial performance of the Greek five-star hotels that are examined. Descriptive results are presented and the respondents' individual characteristics are outlined.

The study provides a benchmark for the measurement of strategic planning and the benefits derived from planning in the Greek hospitality industry, a critical sector for the Greek economy.

The article contributes in the extensive literature on strategic planning, by discussing the development of strategic planning practices in Greek hotels, which operate in a highly uncertain environment.

This study aims to understand the relationship between behavioral integration in the boardroom and board performance.

The authors performed a series of multiple hierarchical regression analyses to explore research questions. Primary data were collected via questionnaires from 184 Nordic members to identify perceptions of behavioral integration and board performance in their boardroom.

The authors found that different dimensions of behavioral integration have a different effect on board performance. The collaborative behavior of the board did not predict any dimension of board performance, whereas information exchange predicted one dimension of board performance, that of providing strategic leadership. The paramount role of joint decision-making is underlined in this study as this positively predicted all of the dimensions of board performance (strategic leadership, networking and readiness of the board).

Future research should investigate behavioral integration among board members using a longitudinal design and expand the sample cross-culturally.

For forming high-performing teams, emphasis should be given on the joint decision-making. Understanding the joint problems, transparency in actions and discussion about the problem under consideration are of paramount importance for the effectiveness of the team.

Team’s conversational environment has crucial impact on team outcomes.

This is one of the rare studies that examine perceptions of executives about the level of behavioral integration in their board.

This paper aims to understand the relationship between the trust of executives in their board, board effectiveness (board performance and strategic decision quality) and organizational performance (financial and operational performance).

Data were collected from 184 board members in the Nordic region, using cross-sectional research design. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the validity of the used scales, whereas correlational analysis and mediation analysis via PROCESS macro in SPSS were used for testing of the hypotheses.

Trust between board members is positively correlated with both dimensions of board effectiveness and both tested dimensions of organizational performance. Besides, trust between the board members positively affects both financial and operational performance (significant total effects in mediation analysis). However, trust had a direct effect only on financial performance, whereas it shows an indirect effect on operational performance through both mediators, board performance and strategic decision quality.

Future research should investigate trust into the board using a longitudinal design, and expand the sample cross-culturally, and control for the influence of other interpersonal variables in board members.

The development of trust in work relationships serves as the foundation for the establishment of significant team and organizational benefits. Business leaders should take into consideration trust issues in business teams and cultivate a trust culture in their organizations.

The findings advance theoretical, social and empirical understanding of trust of executives in their board and its effect on board performance, strategic decision quality and perceived performance. The development of trust in work relationships enhances team performance, networks with strategic partners, community and government, and serves as the foundation for the establishment of trust in the society.

This is one of the scarce studies that examines direct and indirect effects of trust in board and organizational outcomes.

To investigate and portray the nature and use of formal strategic planning in the Greek ocean shipping industry.

Studies carried out in well‐developed industrialised countries, predominantly in the manufacturing sector, have contributed significantly to a better understanding and development of the strategic planning field. Nevertheless, there is lack of research based on countries and sectors/industries that are less conventional in nature. The study attempts to shed some light on how shipping management companies (SMC) carried out strategic planning, through a cross‐sectional study based on a random sample of 34 Greek shipping organisations.

The main findings of the study concern the main planning dimensions: planning completeness, formality, internal and external orientation, CEO's involvement, planning horizons and revision frequencies.

The study provides a benchmark for the measurement of the development of strategic planning in an important service sector in Greece. In addition, it highlights the extent to which indigenous companies operating in a highly uncertain business environment adopt formal, structured and sophisticated planning approaches.

It has been suggested that, if Greek shipping management companies are to obtain the full benefits of planning, systems should be developed which can accommodate advanced financial and scenario planning as well as other strategic tools and techniques. In addition the comprehensive education of the middle level management may contribute significantly to the deeper and timely understanding of the increasingly unpredictable external contingencies.

The paper contributes to the existing voluminous literature on planning diffusion by discussing the adoption of planning practices in organisations that operate in a highly uncertain international environment.

Corporate governance is an area of interest to researchers, stakeholders and the general public. In recent times, there has been an increased concern about the effectiveness of the board within corporate organizations due to corporate scandals and accounting irregularities of some well known firms, which highlighted the inefficiency of monitoring corporate boards and the overseeing of managerial decision making. This paper aims to investigate the effects that a number of factors such as organisational demography, organisational size, ownership type, board size, CEO duality and CEO dependence/independence have on board configuration.

The paper reviews the literature on organisational demography and board structure characteristics. Primary data were gathered from 27 management shipping companies having their head office in Greece.

Findings show high levels of influence of the CEOs on the Board of Directors, since in most cases the CEO is the Chairman of the Board and high levels of control asked by the top management teams in almost all strategic decision processes.

The paper's contribution lies primarily on investigating issues relating to corporate governance in an extremely dynamic, highly extrovert, truly international and at the same time family owned sector; the shipping industry.

The paper presents findings from a European country setting, namely Greece. It focuses on two important organizational features: the chief executive officer and the planning activities adopted by Greek firms. The study attempts first, to describe and identify the CEO’s characteristics, opinions, and predisposition towards planning, and second, to illustrate the strategic planning process in Greece. The paper argues that country environments in transition may have a profound effect on executives’ predisposition into designing planning process. Although it was found that both CEOs and top management teams intensively participate in the planning process, which was perceived as highly formalized and sophisticated, the lack of advanced tools and techniques creates serious questions of whether planning is a valuable resource for the Greek companies or companies operating in other highly uncertain environments.

This paper aims to review how corporate governance is institutionalised in Nigeria and examine the relationship between board size, CEOs’ duality, board composition and the board's involvement in strategy.

A structured questionnaire was sent by post to the chairmen of 138 publicly quoted companies in Nigeria in November 2004.

Using primary and secondary data, our results suggest that the Nigerian public companies have embraced some principles of the Code of Best Practices for Public Companies. There is a high level of board involvement in strategy decision‐making process, but no correlation was found between board involvement and a number of governance variables (board size, board independence and CEO duality).

The sample of 39 responding companies is small although it represents a 28 per cent of response rate and is representative of the Nigerian stock market. However, we are unable to look at other factors such as industry sectors and we cannot generalise our findings regarding corporate governance practices in Nigeria.

The investment climate in Nigeria can become more reassuring than in the past although there is room for further improvements as the effectiveness of the corporate government practices is still in doubt.

This paper adds to the scanty literature available on corporate governance practices in developing, countries. Findings extend our understanding about the strategic functions of the board in Nigeria, which is Africa's most populous nation, and the world's sixth larger producer of oil.

The purpose of this paper is to look inside the “black box” in corporate governance (CG) measurement, and shed some light on how to construct a transparent, reliable and valid index, considering equally both the academics and practitioners’ perspectives.

A synthesized literature review is presented and a CG index is developed combining the strengths of three different methodologies: the Delphi method, the classical test theory (CTT) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). This approach helps authors to break the process into separate steps and to select the appropriate techniques to support their decision regarding the norms, the criteria, the variables and the weights that someone should use to construct a CG index.

The authors’ analysis indicates that a well-designed CG index requires a combination of research methods to identify the best options to solve several methodological issues in index construction. For the application of this multi-methodology in Greece, the authors used two equal and independent samples to explore the different perspectives regarding the importance of the index criteria and sub-criteria. This process provides evidence that the opinion of academics and practitioners in Greece tend to converge. Moreover, it is found that this multi-methodology produces the highest variation in CG scores and ranking orders, as opposed to a traditional approach, in measuring CG disclosure, an important issue with econometric implications.

The limitations of this study are associated with the methods used.

This paper provides practical implications for investors and commercial vendors. For the former, it highlights the need to be more cautious and/or suspicious when they use CG ratings, meaning that they should comprehend the base of the ratings models, and for the latter, it demonstrates the importance of enhancing the transparency in CG indices construction.

The value of the paper lies in improved understanding of the methodological issues in constructing CG indices. This is quite interesting because this approach could serve as a roadmap for other researchers.

This paper seeks to explore the role that boards can play in the contribution of organizational performance and to empirically examine the relationship between the chairman, key board composition variables and firm performance.

The data presented are drawn from a sample of 27 chairmen of Greek corporations listed in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The authors examine hypothesized links between the demographic characteristics of the chairmen of the board, board composition variables, and organizational performance.

The authors found a positive relationship between age and competitive positioning which indicates that, the older the chairperson, the better the competitive positioning. Amazingly, the relationship between age and overall firm performance was found to be negative, indicating that even if the chairperson is older and more experienced the possibly efficient performance of the firm does not depend on that.

The authors managed to collect data from 27 questionnaires; given the small size of the sample, the authors cannot generalize the findings.

The research indicates that understanding the variables that influence top management team and firm performance enhances value creation to investors and shareholders.

The choice of the sample was based on a fundamental principle of corporate governance board leadership structure: the chairman of the board is a different entity from the chief executive officer (CEO). This is one of very few studies concerning corporate governance in Greece focusing on the perception of Greek chairpersons.