The Greek Economic Crisis
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- Greek Police standing by the financial ministry
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- Scene when the protest turned violent
On May 5, 2010 tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Athens angered by huge tax hikes and drastic spending cuts (video link here.) The protest turned violent when protesters set the Greek Finance Ministry aflame with crude gasoline bombs killing three people inside. The question on everyones minds is how did the crisis get so bad?
In focusing on the cultural aspect of Danielle Van Jaarsveld’s October presentation in Comm 101 it is evident that Greece’s organizational culture played a large part in fueling this crisis. Organizational culture is basically the shared beliefs and values held within a organization. According to David Muir and Bradley Blackburn’s article analysing the Greek economic crisis, “tax evasion was not only accepted but embraced by much of the [Greek] population.” This ideology created a very negative organizational culture which lead to an unstable relationship between employees and firms. High compensation rates, huge holiday bonuses, and generous salaries allowing many Greek citizens to retire in their early 50’s may seem like a good thing, but someone had to cover for this. The Greek Government supported this negative organizational culture by financially supporting the commodities Greek citizens enjoyed, unfortunately in the end everyone felt the consequences.