Sustainable Development, COVID-19 and Small Business in Greece: Small Is Not Beautiful

Giorgos Meramveliotakis,Manolis Manioudis

doi:10.3390/admsci11030090

Abstract

The aim of this article is s to show that contrary to the common parlance and to the widespread belief that treats small business as “the backbone of the economy”, in the sense of being the prime motor of wealth and prosperity, therefore the underlying logic is what is good for small business will also help government achieves overall economic policy goals, the prevailing dominant idea that formulates and drives the Greek economic policy is quite the opposite. Based on textual analysis, from Greece’s Structural Adjustment Programs, to the various assessment reports, till the latest “Development Plan for the Greek Economy”, we attempt to reveal that the prevailing idea that penetrates the abovementioned texts is that “small is not beautiful”. Specifically, after indicating a policy paradox regarding the limited financial support that Greek small businesses received or expected to receive despite their vital importance to the Greek economy, we expose the “structural impediment” idea. According to the latter the existence of a large share of small business in the Greek economy is being considered as a structural impediment for economic growth and prosperity. The implication is a policy dictum that favours a form of an evolutionary natural selection process, whereby only those establishments successful enough to grow will be able to survive, thus the vast bulk of the remaining small firms will exit the market.

Highlights

Sciences 11: 90. https://doi.org/Pandemic diseases cause decisive impacts on human societies across economic and social history
Our attempt is to show that contrary to the common parlance and to the widespread belief that treats small business as “the backbone of the economy”, in the sense of being the primer means of wealth and prosperity, the underlying logic is what is good for small business will help government achieves overall economic policy goals, the prevailing dominant idea that formulates and drives the Greek economic policy is quite the opposite
Commission 2019b), small businesses in Greece, including both the micro and the small enterprises, account for an extremely large proportion of 99.7% over the total number of establishments in the country. Their vital role in the Greek economy is further enhanced by their considerable contribution to employment creation

Summary

Introduction

Pandemic diseases cause decisive impacts on human societies across economic and social history. World World Bank’s (2020) latest estimations, SMEs represent about 90% of businesses and more than 50% of employment worldwide, while in the European Union, SMEs are making up 99.8% of all enterprises and two-thirds of employment (European Commission 2019a) These numbers explicitly reveal that the realization of sustainability cannot be conceivable without taking into account the role of SMEs. On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic represents an external shock of unprecedented magnitude for the SMEs, by causing substantial reduction to their revenues and profits and by engendering the very existence of a large portion of them. Even though SMEs increasingly use the internet for a variety of commercial and production-related purposes, on average they fall short in realizing the full potentials of electronic commerce relative to larger firms The latter took advantage of their omnichannel and absorbed the largest part of the effective demand during periods of severe restrictions in social mobility, widening the gap between small and large businesses We believe it is important, to explore this idea within its own frame of reference

Greece and SMEs

Small Is Not Beautiful

Findings

In Place of Conclusions