Boustras, Georgios

Micro and small enterprises (MSEs) constitute the cornerstone of the economy in each country, especially in the European Union, where they are perceived as main components for economic development, innovation, employment and social integration. Effective management of occupational safety and health (OSH) in MSEs’ working environment contributes in sustaining corporate longevity and protects workers’ well-being and productivity. This may become essential, especially for economies that are struggling to recover from economic recession. One essential aspect of OSH involves the identification and management of psychosocial risks. EU-OSHA (2010) has launched two significant surveys related to psychosocial risks; named ESENER 1 and ESENER 2. Since micro-enterprises (employing 1–5 employees) were not included in ESENER 2 (EU-OSHA, 2015), an important part of the picture has been left unattended on a European level. This paper aims to address this gap by focussing on the case of Cyprus, since insufficient amount of micro enterprises from Cyprus participated in ESENER 2. A survey utilising ESENER-2 questions was adapted for exploring micro-enterprises’ employees’ perceptions and awareness about psychosocial risks and their management in the work setting. The main differences and some similarities that were spotted between the results of this study and ESENER-2 results regarding Cyprus are highlighted. The differences indicate that the size of the business and the peculiarities of the Cypriot context impact on the perception and management of psychosocial risks. Further research is required in the field of microenterprises that employ from 1 to 5 people, on an EU and international level with a special focus on psychosocial risk issues in micro-enterprises at the service sector and family businesses.

Purpose: Every year thousands of acres are burned and a number of people lose their lives in forest fires that increasingly surpass the wild land limit and lead on to touristic, urban areas. By and large, Mediterranean countries rely highly on offering a tourist product based on sea, sun, culture and nature. While the sea and sun are not affected by fire catastrophes, places of cultural and natural beauty are indeed hit; tourists end up being uninformed with no proper guidance from the firefighting authorities. This paper seeks to address these issues. Design/methodology/approach: This paper attempts to highlight the relation between fire catastrophes and tourism development, to identify if and how state authorities take into account tourists in the planning and management of appropriate measures. A comparative study between Greece and Cyprus is presented. A number of interviews with stakeholders on the policy and operational level were conducted and the results and their implications are presented. Findings: Planning and suppression is complicated with a number of actors involved in various stages; national tourism organizations in both countries do not take part in the information or planning process. There is an emerging need for the provision of useful, comprehensive, practical information aimed at tourists. Research limitations/implications: The findings of the paper are based in a number of interviews with key policy makers as well as key operational commanders. The participation of the above in the policy making as well as operational phase shows a number of limitations. This paper presents a qualitative approach to the subject. A follow-up quantitative study is already planned. Practical implications: Lessons learnt from previous catastrophes, in-depth analysis of the existing "modus operandi" and "rules of engagement" should provide the necessary background for creating new risk-based, comprehensive, focused communication campaigns. Social implications: Safer societies and lower impact on the environment are the main outcomes of a concerted communication campaign. Tourism represents and multiplies the image of the country as a whole to the world; a solution to the problem would offer added value. Originality/value: The paper is based on a number of in-depth interviews with actors that took part in the actual handling of the two major catastrophes in Cyprus and Greece. The outcome of the interviews is presented for the first time.

Safety Science was established in 1976 as the Journal of Occupational Accidents. Safety Science was established with the vision of promoting multidisciplinary research in the science and technology of human and industrial safety and serving as a guide for the safety of people at work and in other spheres, such as transportation, energy or infrastructure, as well as in every other field of hazardous human activities. To celebrate 40 years of publishing outstanding research, this study intends to develop a bibliometric analysis of the publications of the journal between 1976 and 2016. The purpose is to identify the leading trends of the journal in terms of impact, topics, authors, universities and countries. This study uses the most reliable database, the Web of Science Core Collection. Moreover, the work analyses the mapping of bibliographic couplings, co-citations, citations, co-authorships and co-occurrences of keywords.

Management of health and safety in micro-enterprises (less than 10 employees) is a critical issue due to the relatively high level of injuries in such firms. It is also an under-researched area in the international safety literature. The present paper is based on a nationwide survey with the cooperation of the relevant health and safety enforcement authority among micro-firms in several economic sectors. Micro-enterprises comprise a major percentage (95.4%) of business firms in a small economy like Cyprus. The survey examined the perceptions and work attitudes of workers and their relationship with safety performance of the particular firms.This paper presents the results related to the perceptions of employees. A previous paper presented the results focusing on employers. Information was collected on their demographic characteristics and major influencing factors of safety performance like employee participation in safety decisions and safety training. The safety performance measure, an index comprising several safety performance aspects was assessed by the health and safety (labour) inspectors, in order to overcome potential problems of common method bias when all data are obtained from the same group of respondents.The findings suggest that safety performance has a positive and statistically significant correlation with safety training provided by the firm. It has also a positive and statistically significant association with the safety information available to employees and with the perceived safety conditions. The effect of the participation of workers in safety decisions and their organizational commitment, although significantly correlated with safety performance as individual variables, are not statistically significant after controlling for the effect of the other variables mentioned above. The results show the important relationship between safety training and other good practices (like provision of information and improved safety conditions) on safety performance in micro-firms.

During the last decades, humanity experiences an increasing demographic change. The relative percentage of older people is growing, while fewer young employees are entering the labour force. This phenomenon is directly connected with ageing of the workforce. Older workers constitute a special group with characteristics that require special attention from the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) point of view. The aim of this paper is to address what changes occur in ageing workers as a result of physical and psychological processes and the possible impacts of these at work in relation to OHS and the concept of sustainable work and workplaces. In addition, this paper discusses factors affecting work ability and worker's performance in relation to the ageing phenomenon. Finally, based on the literature, the paper proposes measures to minimize age-related risks and increase awareness. These measures should be designed and adopted at the early stages of working life and continue until retirement. By reducing risk factors of employees, the rate of occupational accidents and occupational diseases may be decreased, thus saving costs for employers, health system and insurance costs, while simultaneously facilitating a healthier retirement for the working-age population.

The recent discovery of hydrocarbons, in large quantities, in Cyprus has brought to the surface, fundamental issues dealing with previously unknown and unchartered, locally, territories. In a sort time, Cyprus will have to transform itself, from a services oriented economy to a hydrocarbon producing and trading economy. The local energy storage industry comprises of small energy storage facilities (7 companies) in a congested area. The plan for the next five years, includes the construction (some of it has already been done) of big energy producing and storage facilities. By default some—if not all—of the existing safety officers and workers, will be part of the new era. The aim of the study was to measure a number of parameters that make up safety culture. In particular—based on previous literature—parameters such as the existence of safety policies, safety performance, safety climate and other were measured with the use of a survey tool in the form of a questionnaire.

Adaptation of our built environment and our Critical Infrastructures will be required to enhance their resilience to climate change. Resilience, as currently promoted for CIs, focuses primarily on minimisation of disruption from extreme weather events and rapid recovery to pre-disruption service levels. Anticipation, absorption through robustness and redundancy, adaptation and recovery are the key attributes in such approaches. Climate change, however, is a unique challenge in that it is characterised by various timescales (short, medium and long), predictable and unpredictable events and slow-onset and rapid-onset events. Severe climate change will also result in a climate regime that is significantly different to our current regime. This requires transformation of our CIs to ones that are flexible, modular and diverse. We propose a framework for enhancing CI resilience to climate change which will move from incremental change to transformation of our CIs. Our framework proposes three timescales (short, medium and long term) and the properties needed at each timescale to achieve the transformation required.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between emotional intelligence, communication, decision-making and conflict management styles in crisis management teams (CMTs), giving emphasis on leader-team member interaction during crisis situations. Participants were 177 individuals involved in CMTs representing Greek public organisations and government. Data were collected by means of structured questionnaires in a series of personal interviews. Results indicate that team members' ability to make decisions, internal communication and leaders' emotional intelligence are positively associated with cooperation and integration within CMTs in public sector. Implications for management are discussed including the need for leaders to further develop emotional intelligence competencies, so that team members are motivated to integrate activities and attain common goals increasing CMT effectiveness.