What is the joint effect of employee satisfaction and customer orientation on the organizational culture in metalworking manufacturing?

It is a known fact that culture is an important element for the organizations. In this context, a research has been carried out in which the main subject is about to investigate the organizational culture depending on the factors of employee satisfaction and customer orientation in metalworking manufacturing firms. To perform the study, we constructed an original model and conducted research with 578 employees of metalworking organizations. After the data analysis, we determined that organizational culture has positive-significant correlation with employee satisfaction and customer orientation (at the 0.000 level). Additionally, the total explained variance of organizational culture – depending on employee satisfaction and customer orientation – has come out as a satisfying value (0.53). According to the results of our research, we are able to conclude that employee satisfaction and customer orientation has a mid-level effect on creating a substantial organizational culture.     

The impact of buyer–supplier relationships on supplier innovativeness: An empirical study in cross-border supply networks

Drawing on organizational learning and the relational view of the firm, this study seeks to understand the factors that drive supplier innovativeness in the context of cross-border supply relationships. To address this research objective, a survey included 189 parts and components manufacturers (suppliers) in Turkey; hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses. The findings demonstrate that interfirm knowledge sharing routines, relation-specific investments, and governance mechanisms may promote supplier innovativeness by expanding the supplier's knowledge resources and encouraging it to invest in innovative activities. In addition, this research emphasizes differentiating effects of the supplier's tier position for the impacts of buyer assistance and cooperative tie. As such, this study contributes to the purchasing and supply management literature by empirically showing how buyer–supplier relationships, particularly in cross-border supply networks, affect supplier innovativeness.     

Civilizational futures: Clashes or alternative visions in the age of globalization?

This article underlines the existing similarities between Samuel Huntington's civilizational approach hypothesis and the fundamentals of political Islam. The similarity pertains to the argument related to the gradual weakening of nation-states, which also constitutes the main theme of the globalization debate. The civilizational approach and political Islam signify new efforts to reach a much larger political community and organization in world politics. Both of them argue that the formation of new political actor(s) is replacing the old nation-states across religious and cultural affinities. The terrorist organization Al-Qaeda is trying to legitimize its political violence by manipulating the weakness of the nation-states and the utopia of the formation of a much more comprehensive political community and political organization through Islam. Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis indirectly provides a base for Al-Qaeda's rhetoric and a certain type of justification for its terror activities, since the theory argues for the inevitability of the conflict between civilizations, regardless of their political regimes (liberal or totalitarian) with civilizations being determined by their cultural and religious differences—a theme that is used by the ideologues of political Islam.     

Sustainable urban tourism success factors and the economic performance of small tourism enterprises

The aim of this study is to introduce the relationship between sustainable urban tourism success factors and the economic performance of small tourism enterprises (STEs). The related data was obtained from 330 STEs business owners/managers in Eskisehir (Turkey). To determine the dimensions Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed and Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used for verifying these dimensions. Structural Equation Modelling was applied in order to introduce the relation which is foreseen. As a result of the analysis, seven dimensions of urban tourism success factors and two dimensions of the economic performance of STEs have been determined and a significant relation was found between them. These findings provide an insight to literature and new directions and suggestions for local governments, regional marketing organizations and business managers on how tourism development and sustainability can be achieved in urban areas.     

Employment,Wages, and Alcohol Consumption in Russia

This article investigates the association between alcohol consumption and labor market outcomes in Russia, using data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS). It estimates cross-sectional and fixed effects models of the impacts of alcohol consumption on employment and wages for males and females using three different measures of drinking. The cross-sectional findings indicate that alcohol consumption has an inverse U-shaped impact on employment and wages for females. The impact on males appears to be positive but the inverse-U shape is less pronounced. Once the unobserved individual heterogeneity is accounted for using fixed effects, alcohol consumption is found to have no significant effect on employment for either males or females. The fixed effect wage models indicate that alcohol consumption has a small, positive, but linear impact on the wage rate for both males and females. Models including fixed effects generate estimates that are smaller in magnitude compared with those of cross-sectional models. The findings are robust to several diagnostic checks.     

Market efficiency and international diversification: Evidence from India

This study evaluates one of the most important emerging markets, India (Bombay Stock Exchange and Indian National Exchange), for its efficiency and for its potential to offer diversification benefits to international investors. Market-wide tests include; 1) contemporaneous relationship, 2) Granger type causality and 3) day-of-the-week effect. Tests on individual Indian stocks include: 1) panel estimation of Granger causality, 2) stock-by-stock estimation of Granger causality and 3) runs test. In sum, Indian markets are well integrated with the international equity markets, a characteristic that lowers the international diversification benefits. While day-of-the-week effect is an international spillover, it may be possible to predict individual Indian stocks' returns through causality with international equity markets and through momentum trading techniques.     

Return and volatility spillovers among CIVETS stock markets

Coined in 2009, the CIVETS refers to Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and South Africa as a new group of frontier emerging markets with young and growing populations and dynamic economies. We provide a first look into the return and volatility spillovers between the CIVETS countries by employing causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance tests. The empirical results indicate that the contemporaneous spillover effects are generally low. Nevertheless, CIVETS stock markets may exhibit higher degrees of co-movements at times. The structure of the causal relationships further suggests the presence of intra-regional and inter-regional return and volatility interdependence effects.     

An empirical analysis of corporate debt maturity structure

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the maturity structure of corporate debt. A dynamic model is estimated by GMM estimation procedure using data for an unbalanced panel of 429 non-financial UK firms over the period of 1983–96. The evidence provides strong support for the hypotheses that firms with more growth opportunities in their investment sets tend to have more shorter-term debt and firm size exerts a negative impact on debt maturity structure. The results also support the maturity-matching hypothesis that firms match the maturity structure of their debt to the maturity of their assets. There is less support for the view that firms use their debt maturity structure to signal information to the market. We do not find evidence for a negative correlation between taxes and debt maturity. Our results also suggest that firms have long-term target ratios and they adjust to the target ratio relatively fast, which might indicate that the costs of being away from target ratios are significant for firms.     

The geographic accessibility of child care subsidies and evidence on the impact of subsidy receipt on childhood obesity

This paper examines the impact of the spatial accessibility of public human services agencies on the likelihood of receiving a child care subsidy among disadvantaged mothers with young children. In particular, we collect data on the location of virtually every human services agency in the US and use this information to calculate the approximate distance that families must travel from home in order to reach the nearest office that administers the subsidy application process. Using data from the Kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K), our results indicate that an increase in the distance to a public human services agency reduces the likelihood that a family receives a child care subsidy. Specifically, we estimate an elasticity of subsidy receipt with respect to distance of −0.13. The final section of the paper provides an empirical application in which we use variation in families’ travel distance to identify the causal effect of child care subsidies on children’s weight outcomes. Our instrumental variables estimates suggest that subsidized child care leads to sizeable increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among low-income children.