Food safety attitudes and practices of chefs in Cappadocia region,Turkey

ABSTRACT

Chefs working at hotels, restaurants, and public institutions play a major role in food safety. The aim of this study is to explore attitudes and practices regarding food safety issues among chefs in the Cappadocia region, Turkey. The data was collected using a convenience sampling method of the non-probability sampling technique. The survey was conducted between the period of September 2018 and November 2018, and 108 chefs working at hotels, restaurants, and public institutions participated. The data were analyzed using frequencies, exploratory factor analysis, independent sample t-test, ANOVA, correlation, and simple linear regression analyses. Most of the chefs (79.6%) had taken a basic food safety training course. The findings reveal that there are statistically significant (p < .05) differences between groups: (a) demographics and attitudes, and (b) demographics and practices. The findings also show that there is a significant (p < .05) and positive correlation (r = 0.48) between the attitudes and practices of chefs. This study posits that food safety trained chefs have higher scores in terms of both attitudes and practices than those who have not received. It is recommended that all chefs should be encouraged to attend food safety training programs. Practical and academic implications are discussed in detail.     

Evaluating the Implementation of a Mandatory Dual Reporting System: The Case of Indonesian Local Government

Informative and transparent financial information in the public sector is crucial for improving public sector management and eradicating corruption. Given this, Indonesia has reformed its public sector accounting, reporting and accountability systems by implementing a dual reporting system known as ‘cash towards accrual’, following similar reforms in developed countries. Drawing on the experience of five local governments (districts) in Indonesia, this study finds that the implementation of the dual reporting system has helped local governments to produce transparent and informative reports. However, the accrual‐based contents of the dual reports produced by the new reporting system are underused for decision making. In addition, there has been a significant increase in costs associated with the implementation of the new accounting regime in the jurisdictions studied. The study also finds that the ability of the users to use information generated by the new accounting system is more important than just a legal and mandatory requirement to use the new system.     

Stock market and macroeconomic volatility comparison: an US approach

In 2007, as the US subprime mortgage market began to fall down, which reached its peak with the catastrophic collapse of the Lehman Brothers, no one was aware of that this was going to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Evaluating the advantages and disadvantages connected with financial globalization demands a pure understanding of the influence of financial volatility. Up to the present few researches focused on analyzing macroeconomic volatility of national economies. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to compare the forecast performance of stock market and macroeconomic volatility of US economy between 2007 and 2010. Accordingly, two different types of financial time series were generated, namely weekly stock returns and quarterly return on investment. Firstly, the appropriate model was determined via time series analysis. Secondly, the relevant ARCH-type model was implemented. Finally, conditional variance forecast performance of models was presented with respect to confidence interval. Furthermore, coefficient of correlation between squared residuals and coefficient of conditional variance was given.     

Probability Forecasts of Macroaggregates in the Turkish Economy

We provide probability forecasts of key Turkish macroeconomic variables such as inflation and output growth. The probability forecasts are derived from a core vector error correction model of the Turkish economy and its several variants. We use model and window averaging to address uncertainties arising from estimated models and possible structural breaks. The performances of the different models and their combinations are evaluated using relevant forecast accuracy tests in different pseudo out-of-sample settings. The results indicate that successful directional forecasts can be obtained for output growth and inflation. Averaging over both the models and the estimation windows improves the level of accuracy of the forecasts.     

Linking intrapreneurship activities to multidimensional firm performance in Turkish manufacturing firms: an empirical study

This study investigates the relationships among the external environment, intrapreneurship and performance of Turkish manufacturing firms. As a multidimensional construct, intrapreneurship is examined in terms of innovativeness, new business venturing, self-renewal, risk taking, and proactiveness. The environmental munificence and hostility are examined as the external determinants of intrapreneurship activities. Firm performance is considered as a multifaceted structure that covers financial and non-financial measures. Based on the data from 331 Turkish manufacturing firms, empirical results showed that environmental factors have statistically significant impact on the intrapreneurship activities of these firms. Profitability is negatively and significantly associated with self-renewal, while it is positively and significantly related with dimensions of innovation and risk taking. Growth is found to be significantly and positively correlated with only new business venturing. Finally, innovation is the only dimension that is positively and significantly associated with both customer and employee satisfaction, which are the main non-financial firm performance measures.     

Promoting investment in the Turkish construction sector: a structural path analysis

The construction sector in Turkey boomed in the period between the turn of the millennium and the onset of the global crisis. This paper studies the employment generation effects of growth of this sector, taking into account that it not only depends on domestic production factors but also on imported inputs. In order to unravel the interactions of the construction sector with the rest of the economy, structural path analysis of both labour and imported intermediate input demand generation is used based on the 2002 and 2009 WIOD data for Turkey. The findings indicate that labour linkages weakened between 2002 and 2009, while import linkages became slightly stronger. The sectors that have played key roles in this are identified, as are the linkages between these. The findings have implications for the persistent unemployment and current account deficits in Turkey.     

Analytical Comparison of Clustering Techniques for the Recognition of Communication Patterns

Group Decision and Negotiation - The systematic processing of unstructured communication data as well as the milestone of pattern recognition in order to determine communication groups in...