Article Information

Abstract

In recent years, several advences in information technologies have increased the computer use of consumers in the world and our country. These developments have revealed a new way of doing business known as e-commerce. For consumers, online shopping has become the most popular internet activity because it does not require much physical effort, personalize the shopping environment, provide time and cost savings to buyers, and allow comparisons of product, brand, price and company recognition. Therefore, this study focuses on measuring the trends of internet shopping of public employees. For this aim, we included 495 staff of Tokat Governer and Gaziosmanpasa University. This study proved that the educated and higher income levels consumers preferred the internet shopping. As a result, we showed that issues preventing preferring of the internet shopping are the delay in the delivery of products, and deceptive and misleading advertisements.

Keywords:Internet, Consumer, Purchasing Behavior

Article Information

Abstract

Turkish textile firms work under a heavily competitive atmosphere in terms of prices due to globalization. Firms have to take into consideration several criteria like cost, quality and delivery-on-time in order to survive the global market conditions and to maintain profitability. To meet these criteria, contractor companies have to select the best subcontractor. Therefore, the selection of subcontractor for the contractor company is a problem. The aim of this study is to solve the problem of Yeşim Textile, a contractor company, about the selection of the best subcontractor for its customer Nike. To solve the problem, firstly, the main criteria and relevant sub-criteria, which are of importance for Yeşim and Nike, were defined. Then, authorities from the firms were interviewed in order to formulate pairwise comparison matrices using the Saaty’s importance scale. In a sense, this matrix is the model of this study. The model, named AHP, was analyzed using the Expert Choice software. Best subcontractors for Yeşim were determined based on the model results. In addition, these results were analyzed for the firm’s decision makers.

Keywords:Analytical hierarchy process (AHP), Decision making, Multi criteria analysis, Contractor, Subcontractor

Article Information

Abstract

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the official declaration of the transition from socialism to capitalism, Russia, both in terms of its economic potential and population and in terms of its inheritance of a strict centralist system has a special standing among transitional economies. Having undertaken a “shock” transition to capitalism under the leadership of the International Monetary Fund, this period was quite painful. Within a short time, the country underwent one of its most severe and painful crisis in 1998. Far beyond a transition from socialism to capitalism, bearing the multi-dimensional change in cultural, political and policy areas coupled with a complex process in mind, this transition was no doubt much more difficult and sensitive for a nation like Russia that had a rooted socialist tradition. This reality when combined with a “shock therapy” strategy based on neo-classical prescriptions that guided this process did not take into account the particular condition of the nation together with standard reform policies that ignored institutional change, it became inevitable to question what type of a system came about in Russia. In this context, the purpose of this study is to examine whether the policies put into the implementation within the axis of a basic strategy that was chosen during the transition period did in fact create a capitalist system or not in Russia.

Keywords:Transition Economies, Transition Period in Russia, Neoclassic Transition Model, Shock Therapy, Gradualism.

Article Information

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the validity and reliability of Turkish version of Organizational Cynicism Scale developed by Brandes et al. (1999). The research was conducted on 300 workers employed in the manufacturing entreprises of Kayseri Organized Industrial Zone. The psychometric properties of the scale were examined by cronbach alpha and item-total corelations for the reliability, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses for the validity. As a result of the factor analysis, three factors emerged as in the original form of the scale: affect, cognition, and behavior. The Cronbach’s alpha for the oganizational cynicism scale was 0,91,  and affect, cognition and behavior dimensions revealed the coefficients of 0,94, 0,87, and 0,82 respectively. The psycometric properties of the Turkish version of Organizational Cynicism Scale showed that the scale has a satisfactory level of reliability and validity for the Turkish employee sample.

Keywords:Organizational Cynicism, Validity, Reliability, Manufacturing Industry

Article Information

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between organizational culture and organizational commitment. Two different scales (Organizational Culture Scales and Organizational Commitment Scales) were used as data gathering instrument. The research was conducted on employees of service sector working in call center in the city of Kayseri and working in insurance company in İzmir (n=181). In this research correlation analysis was made to describe the link between subscales of organizational culture and organizational commitment. The results revealed a positive relationship between Factor:1 functional culture traits and affective commitment (r=0,79,p<0,01), a negative relationship between Factor:1 functional culture traits and continuance commitment (r=-0,33,p<0,01). Besides Factor:2 organizational culture traits positively correlated with affective commitment (r=0,71, p<0,01), negatively correlated (r=-0,25,p<0,01) with continuance commitment. Furthermore the study explores the organizational commitment with five demographics variables (gender, age, marital status, education and organizational tenure).   Findings show that respondents’ perceptions of organizational commitment vary due to their gender, education and organizational tenure.

Keywords:Organizational culture, organizational commitment, continuance commitment, affective commitment, Organizational Commitment Questionnaire-OCQ

Article Information

Abstract

The study discussed in this article questions whether certain reward practices used by organizations are better than others when comparing the employee results based on TQM. We first examine reward systems and TQM relevant literature. After related literature review, reward practices have been handled in two groups as intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards. In the sample, which consists of 217 businesses that operate in Turkish manufacturing industry and apply TQM, intrinsic and extrinsic reward practices of firms on people results have been analyzed. The results of this survey are analyzed through descriptive analysis, ANOVA and MANOVA analyses. As the main finding of the research, it has been determined that application level of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards in Turkish manufacturing industry is not high. It has been identified that intrinsic rewards have a significant influence on employee results; however extrinsic rewards do not have a significant influence on employee results in Turkish manufacturing industry.  This study highlighted the importance of the intrinsic reward system for implementing TQM.

Keywords:Reward systems, intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards, TQM, EFQM.

Article Information

Abstract

Mandatory network unbundling is one of the most important topics in regulatory economics today. The concept has crucial importance in the deregulation of many previously regulated industries including electricity, telecommunications, gas and railroads. Upon initial examination, determining the correct input prices would seem important for sending the correct price signals to the entrants for their efficient make-or-buy decisions. However, Sappington uses a standard Hotelling location model to show that input prices are irrelevant for an entrant’s make or buy decision. In this study, it is shown that this result is closely related to the degree of product differentiation when firms are engaged in price competition. Specifically, it is shown that input prices are irrelevant when firms produce homogeneous products, but are relevant for make-or-buy decisions when the entrant and incumbent produce differentiated products. These results suggest that, in general, it is important for regulators to set correct prices in order to not distort the entrants’ efficient make-or-buy decisions.

Keywords: Input Prices, mandatory unbundling, Make-or-Buy decisions, deregulation, horizontal product differantiation

Article Information

Abstract

The current study takes a contingency theory approach to the relationship between market leadership and a variety of marketing strategy concepts making up a firm’s strategic profile, including a firm’s Miles and Snow strategy type, market growth, service growth, service focus, market coverage, the Porter strategy group, and market orientation.  The results of the study support this approach, showing that at least six of the seven strategic contingency combinations exhibit a significant relationship to market share.  Utilizing a sample drawn from the financial services industry, it is found that firms possessing a recommended “fit”, as when market leader firms exhibit a more aggressive marketing strategy profile, tend to have higher levels of market share.  The results of the study also reveal that a firm’s market share performance is related to the total number of strategic “fits” between the firm’s market leadership position and the various components of the firm’s strategic profile. 

Keywords:Contingency theory, strategic fit, market leadership, market share performance

The increasing human needs recently and the dependence of the most of these needs on the energy make this sector more and more significant everyday. Should it known that how the other sectors are depended on the sub-sectors of the energy, it would be so easy to produce policy. Input-output analysis as a unit of economic activity researches the sectors and especially the exchanges of intermediate input between the sectors. So input-output analysis is a major instrument in terms of enabling to research the production and usage of the outputs of the productive sectors in economic scale, in sectoral level and quantatively. In the analysis made by using the input-output tables of Turkey Statistics Office for 2002 it was observed that energy sector has been a key sector recently. Also the relation of energy sector with the others was searched and the most input-output marketing sector of the energy sector was analyzed.

Keywords: Input-Output Analysis, Energy Sector, Turkey

In this study, whether the number of ships departing and arriving in Turkish ports has effect on industrial production index and total trade (the sum of import and export) was investigated by regression analysis between 2004-2010 years. According to the results obtained, the increase of the number of ship transportation in Turkey creates a positive and statistically significant effect on industrial production index and total trade.

Keywords:Logistics, Logistics and maritime transportation, Maritime trade, Logistics and export-import relations, Logistics and index of industrial production.