The present Conference is the 4th of similar conferences with the same subject, which are organised of the Department of Business Administration. The Technological Educational Institution of Athens, is a Tertiary Educational Institution of Excellence with an impressive record in teaching and research and is sponsoring the present Conference. The purpose of our Conference is to present and publish the research output of, not only TEI of Athens, but all the Universities and Technological Institutions of Greece and the different Nations of the World. Another important purpose is to facilitate the interaction between two worlds: the world of Business and the world of Academic Community. The organizers of this Conference have the ambition to establish a forum for discussions on the theory and applications of the Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in the different business sectors such as Small to Medium Enterprises or large Companies in Industry, Commerce, Tourism, Health, Public Sector, Shipping Industry and financial services. The Conference has a Scientific Committee and all the papers have been examined by two anonymous referees. Selected papers will be published in internationally recognized journals. The Proceedings of the Conference have ISBN, ISSN numbers and they will appear, after the Conference in Google.

Sustainable Development and Innovations in Marine Technologies includes the papers presented at the 18th International Congress of the Maritime Association of the Mediterranean (IMAM 2019, Varna, Bulgaria, 9-11 September 2019). Sustainable Development and Innovations in Marine Technologies includes a wide range of topics: Aquaculture & Fishing; Construction; Defence & Security; Design; Dynamic response of structures; Degradation/ Defects in structures; Electrical equipment of ships; Human factors; Hydrodynamics; Legal/Social aspects; Logistics; Machinery & Control; Marine environmental protection; Materials; Navigation; Noise; Non-linear motions – manoeuvrability; Off-shore and coastal development; Off-shore renewable energy; Port operations; Prime movers; Propulsion; Safety at sea; Safety of Marine Systems; Sea waves; Seakeeping; Shaft & propellers; Ship resistance; Shipyards; Small & pleasure crafts; Stability; Static response of structures; Structures, and Wind loads. The IMAM series of Conferences started in 1978 when the first Congress was organised in Istanbul, Turkey. IMAM 2019 is the eighteenth edition, and in its nearly forty years of history, this biannual event has been organised throughout Europe. Sustainable Development and Innovations in Marine Technologies is essential reading for academics, engineers and all professionals involved in the area of sustainable and innovative marine technologies.

The response of the international community to the pressing socio-ecological problems has been framed around the concept of ‘sustainable development’. The ecological pressure, however, has continued to rise and mainstream sustainability discourse has proven to be problematic. It contains an instrumental view of the world, a strong focus on technological solutions, and the premise that natural and human-made ‘capitals’ are substitutable. This trajectory, which is referred to as ‘weak sustainability’, reproduces inequalities, denies intrinsic values in nature, and jeopardises the wellbeing of humans as well as other beings. Based on the assumptions of strong sustainability, this edited book presents practical and theoretical alternatives to today’s unsustainable societies. It investigates and advances pathways for humanity that are ecologically realistic, ethically inclusive, and receptive to the task’s magnitude and urgency. The book challenges the traditional anthropocentric ethos and ontology, economic growth-dogma, and programmes of ecological modernisation. It discusses options with examples on different levels of analysis, from the individual to the global, addressing the economic system, key sectors of society, alternative lifestyles, and experiences of local communities. Examining key topics including human–nature relations and wealth and justice, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental and development studies, ecological economics, environmental governance and policy, sustainable business, and sustainability science.

The recent financial crisis and the rapid changes in the economic and technological environment have highlighted the need for further reinforcement of the financial sector. Banks have been forced to be competitive and to implement risk assessment and management systems. Due to the competitive financial environment that has been developed, the principles of the Second Banking Directive, have provided equal competitive conditions for all European banking institutions, and lead us to the principles of Basel III. Moreover, new banking products and techniques are developed to accommodate increased customer needs. The establishment of these new products requires the implementation of innovative processes for their efficient management. There is plenty of research about bank efficiency and especially with the methodological tools that can be used to improve performance of the banking sector. Therefore, the purpose of this edited volume is to contribute to the understanding of issues dealing with new trends in bank efficiency during the years of financial crisis, covering a range of banking problems, such as bank performance, efficiency, profitability, credit risk and stress testing.

This book presents a broad range of innovative applications and case studies in all areas of management and engineering, including public administration, finance, marketing, engineering, transportation, and energy systems. It addresses issues related to problem structuring, preference modeling, and model construction, presenting a framework that provides clear decision-making support in practice. In addition, it includes hybrid and integrated techniques combining multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) with other analytical methods. The book reflects the growing impact of MCDM in the field of management science and operations research. Building on recent and established theoretical advances and presenting their applications in specific domains, it offers a comprehensive resource for researchers, graduate students and professionals alike.

1 DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was initially developed as a method for assessing the comparative efficiencies of organisational units such as the branches of a bank, schools, hospital departments or restaurants. The key in each case is that they perform feature which makes the units comparable the same function in terms of the kinds of resource they use and the types of output they produce. For example all bank branches to be compared would typically use staff and capital assets to effect income generating activities such as advancing loans, selling financial products and carrying out banking transactions on behalf of their clients. The efficiencies assessed in this context by DEA are intended to reflect the scope for resource conservation at the unit being assessed without detriment to its outputs, or alternatively, the scope for output augmentation without additional resources. The efficiencies assessed are comparative or relative because they reflect scope for resource conservation or output augmentation at one unit relative to other comparable benchmark units rather than in some absolute sense. We resort to relative rather than absolute efficiencies because in most practical contexts we lack sufficient information to derive the superior measures of absolute efficiency. DEA was initiated by Charnes Cooper and Rhodes in 1978 in their seminal paper Chames et al. (1978). The paper operationalised and extended by means of linear programming production economics concepts of empirical efficiency put forth some twenty years earlier by Farrell (1957).

This book analyses the relative importance of small firms in industrial economies. It brings together a series of studies spanning a spectrum of selected countries in developed Western nations and Eastern Europe to identify the exact role of small firms and how this role has evolved. A striking result which emerges is that a distinct and consistent shift away from large firms and towards small enterprises has occurred within the manufacturing sector of all Western countries, while the role of small firms in Eastern European nations has been remarkably restricted, and, indeed, all these countries have experienced a shift away from small firms. It is clear from this analysis that a major challenge for political and economic reform in Central and Eastern Europe is to create the strong entrepreneurial sector which exists in the West.