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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is a model by Davis (1989) which was developed after improving his ideas previously-used in his doctoral dissertation that states the acceptance of the new technology of end-users can be formed by the aid of (1) Perceived usefulness and (2) Perceived ease of use. Technology Acceptance Model guided the ideas which defending that success of the information systems – technologically – can be achieved not only by technical and administrative features of the users but also by their personal characteristics, expectations and perceptions; user’s perception on various issues can affect this success as well.

This study examines the user factor in order to determine the success of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, within the framework of TAM. 236 firms which use ERP softwares participated in the survey study. Results prove that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness have a positive and statistically significant effect on ERP implementation success as well as on perceived organizational performance. These results reveal that all hypotheses have been supported and the study is coherent the findings of similar studies within the literature.

Keywords:Technology Acceptance Model, Perceived Usefullnes, Perceived Ease of Use, Enterprise Resource Planning Implementation Success, Perceived Organizational Performance

Several negative emotions as stress, tiredness and dissatisfaction within intense work environment in the organizational context can give employees to develop a burnout response. We focused the personality as have an impact in predicting the emerging burnout response in employees, and we explored the roles of the personality in the burnout processes. The data, gathered from 313 primary school teachers, were analyzed with using structural equation modeling. Results showed that personality dimensions as extrovert, emotional stability and conscientiousness predicted the emotional exhaustion; extrovert, agreeableness and conscientiousness predicted the depersonalization; and just conscientiousness predicted the reduced personal accomplishment as dimensions of burnout response. All the results suggested that personality characteristics had important effects in predicting burnout response dimensions and the implications were discussed in the light of the findings of the studies in related literature.

Keywords:Burnout, Personality, Teacher, Organizational behavior, Structural equation modeling

Shaping and changing the attitude of academic staff in private higher education institutions is critical in enhancing their commitment for the overall improvement of organizational performance. This will enable private universities to compete with other institutions as well as to produce high quality and competitive graduates. The first objective of this research is to examine the relationship between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment. The second objective is to explore the influence of the four cognitions of psychological empowerment: meaning cognition, competence cognition, self-determination cognition and impact cognition on organizational commitment. The study employed a stratified proportionate sampling design. A total of 247 academicians from four private universities participated in the survey. The result indicated that the overall psychological empowerment is significantly related to organizational commitment. Further analysis also revealed that of the four cognitions of psychological empowerment, only impact cognition significantly contributes to organization commitment. Managers who empower their employees by giving them opportunities to make decisions about their work methods, pace and efforts will subsequently increase their subordinates’ commitment.

Keywords:Organizational Commitment, Psychological Empowerment, Economic Transformation Programme, High-Income Nation and Malaysian Private Universities