Part III: conclusion: summary, comparison and suggestions

Chapter 14: The Business System and Management Practices in Greece. The first conclusion chapter provides a summary of management practices and the business system, by bringing together all the elements found in the chapters regarding common patterns of causal factors from the business system which explain certain types of managerial behaviour and practices within the firm. The discussion describes the situation in typical Greek firms (micro-SMEs), with references to larger counterparts for comparison. Chapter 15: Comparing systems and practices: peripheral countries vs. the UK. The second conclusion chapter completes the picture by putting the Greek case into perspective by comparing it to, first, peripheral countries’ business systems (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Spain) and, second, with the UK (which is a representative of a core-developed business system). It is not the purpose of this chapter to compare business systems per se, but rather to show how the factors discovered in the book so far exist in different business systems and how these affect their management practices. We then include some statistical evidence from EU databases to illustrate these. Chapter 16: Suggestions for more research on the business system and practices in Greece. This last chapter will discuss ways forward in terms of academic research focusing on Greece, based on the suggestions by the authors.