Performance implications of institutionalization process in family-owned businesses: Evidence from an emerging economy

This paper attempts to understand the role of two highly relevant founder family characteristics, harmony among family members and the degree of democratization in decision-making, in the institutionalization and adaptive capability development processes of family firms in Turkey as an exemplar of an emerging market. The paper examines how institutionalization and adaptability jointly drive firm-level differences in quantitative (i.e., sales growth, market share, and return on investment) and qualitative performance (i.e., quality of goods/services, new product development, employee satisfaction) components. Data were collected from 436 respondents in 132 family firms through structured questionnaires administered to at least three respondents from each firm. Findings indicated that among the institutionalization dimensions, transparency had the strongest effect on both quantitative and qualitative firm performance, whereas adaptability influenced qualitative performance only. Harmony in family relations increased efforts for institutionalization, whereas democracy in decision-making enhanced adaptability. Implications of these findings are discussed and several future research directions are suggested.     

How do monetary operations impact tourism demand? The case of Turkey

All monetary operations such as revaluation and devaluation have some degree of impact on tourism demand at different significance levels. The purpose of this study was to explain how devaluation and revaluation affect tourism demand (domestic and international) and what the government should do to obtain the greatest benefits from them. Turkey has one of the fastest growing tourism industries in the world, and has been experiencing high inflation at a very significant level since the 1970s. The Turkish Government sometimes makes value adjustments on the Turkish national currency, the ‘Lira’, and these adjustments have influenced domestic and international tourism demand in Turkey. The case of Turkey is discussed specifically. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The export propensity of Turkish manufacturing and trading house firms∗

A substantial amount of research has been carried out on the export marketing behaviour of firms during the last twenty years. However, most of these studies have looked at the export behaviour of firms in a developed country. The present study examines the export orientation of Turkish manufacturing and trading house firms and tries to differentiate these two types of firms in terms of their export drives. The findings of this study may be applicable to other developing countries which are at a level of economic development similar to that of Turkey.     

The inflation-hedging properties of Turkish REITs

This study empirically tests the inflation-hedging abilities of Turkish REITs in comparison to the indices of common stocks listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) over the period December 1999 to December 2004. Two main factors motivate this study. First, compared to their counterparts in developed capital markets, Turkish REITs have some important tax incentives as well as flexibility in managing their portfolios. Second, the Turkish economy provides a rare and good opportunity to test the hedging behaviour of real estate stocks in periods of both high- and moderate-inflation rates. The empirical results show that Turkish REITs, in general, provide a better hedge against both actual and expected inflation than do the ISE common stock indices. Dividing the entire sample period into the high- and moderate-inflation sub-periods, we find that the hedging ability of REITs is better under high inflation than under moderate inflation.     

To innovate or to transfer?

FDI has been considered by many development economists as an important channel for transfer of technology to developing countries. It is suggested that modern, advanced technologies introduced by multinational firms can diffuse to domestic firms through spillovers. In this paper, we study innovation and technology transfer activities of domestic and foreign firms in Turkish manufacturing industries, and the impact of horizontal, vertical and labor spillovers on these activities. Our analysis shows that foreign firms are more innovative than their domestic counterparts, and transfer technology from abroad (mostly from their parent companies). Horizontal spillovers from foreign firms seem to be insignificant. The effects of foreign firms on technological activities of other firms in vertically related industries are ambiguous. High-tech suppliers tend to have a high rate of innovation when the share of foreign users is high, but the opposite is true for users: high-tech users supplied mainly by foreign firms tend to have a lower rate of innovation. Labor turnover is found to be the main channel of spillovers. Our findings reiterate the importance of tacitness of knowledge, and confirm that technology cannot easily be transferred through passive mechanisms.     

Joint and interactive effects of trust and (inter) dependence on relational behaviors in long-term channel dyads

The authors investigate the effects of trust on the relational behaviors of firms in long-term channel dyads across different interdependence structures. Based on the long-term nature of the empirical setting, trust is posited to exert a positive effect on the emergence of relational behaviors in all interdependence conditions. This positive effect of trust is hypothesized to be stronger in highly and symmetrically interdependent channel dyads than in low-interdependence-type symmetric dyads. In addition, for both relatively more dependent and relatively less dependent members of asymmetric dyads, the effect size of trust is hypothesized to increase as the perceived level of interdependence asymmetry increases. Data collected from automobile dealers in Turkey reveal that trust in the supplier has the strongest positive effect on the relational behaviors of dealers in asymmetric dealer-supplier dyads that perceive themselves relatively less dependent than their suppliers. For relatively more dependent dealers, trust is found to exert a modest positive effect. In symmetrically interdependent dealer-supplier dyads, trust exerts a modest positive effect on dealer relational behaviors in the low mutual dependence condition, and this effect size reduces to the point of nonsignificance in the high mutual dependence condition. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

Learning process in new product development teams and effects on product success: A socio-cognitive perspective

The study purports to develop and empirically test a model of team learning process and its effects on team performance in new product development teams. Using the socio-cognitive theory of learning in groups and organizations, several hypotheses were tested to show that the primer components of social cognition (that is, information acquisition, information dissemination, information implementation, unlearning, thinking, intelligence, improvisation, sense-making, and memory) form an interactive process model of the team learning phenomenon. By studying 165 new product development projects, it was shown: (i) that the eight primer socio-cognitive factors of information acquisition, information dissemination, information implementation, memory, thinking, improvisation, unlearning, and sense-making constitute interrelated sub-components of a higher-order team information-processing construct; (ii) that team intelligence is positively related to components of team information-processing; and (iii) that information-processing facilitates new product success primarily through the positive effects of superior information implementation. Theoretical and managerial implications of the study findings are discussed.     

A new fuzzy multi-criteria framework for measuring sustainability performance of a supply chain

Sustainable supply chain performance measurement is aimed at addressing environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainable supply chain management. It can be argued that it is not easy to reduce all dimensions of sustainable supply chain to a single unit. Then, the issue is that all valuations should somehow be reducible to a single one-dimensional standard. Multi-criteria evaluation introduces a framework to remedy this issue. As a consequence, multi-criteria evaluation seems to supply a proper and adequate assessment framework for sustainable supply chain assessment. In this study, a multi-criteria framework based on fuzzy entropy and fuzzy multi-attribute utility (FMAUT) is proposed in order to evaluate and compare the company performances in terms of sustainable supply chain. However, note that reducing all aspects of sustainable supply chain to a single unit using a multi-criteria framework may not be sufficient to satisfy all the needs of decision makers although it is used to evaluate sustainability performance of supply chains with respect to three aspects. Therefore, in this research, an alert management system is also developed to satisfy further requirements of users. The proposed frameworks are tested using data obtained from one of the middle sized Turkish grocery retailers.