Alleviating job stress to improve service employee work affect: the influence of rewarding

Firms strive to identify interventions that promote customer contact employee (CCE) well-being by mitigating job stress to encourage better service experiences for customers. Drawing on equity theory, this research examines the influences of alternative rewarding approaches on CCE job stress and work-related attitudes, by assessing the effects of intrinsic (social recognition) and extrinsic (monetary) rewarding on CCE job stress, commitment to the organization, and customer orientation. Results of a survey of 220 CCEs from multiple service organizations indicate that social recognition reduces CCE job stress but that, contrary to expectations, monetary rewarding increases it. Moreover, satisfaction with pay has a greater influence on CCE customer orientation than social recognition.     

Visualizing financial success: planning is key

Recent economic troubles in the US and abroad highlight the importance of family financial capability, including an understanding of financial markets. Financial capability is the foundation for desired financial behaviours, such as saving, budgeting, using credit wisely and planning. Study participants, a subsample of respondents to a Turkish university financial literacy survey (n = 374), who reported uninterrupted income for a 3‐year period were grouped as ‘planners’ and ‘non‐planners’. These groupings allowed examination of the relationships between planning, financial management decisions, and differential outcomes in daily household financial well‐being. The practice of preferred financial management behaviours was predictive of debt. This research makes a unique contribution to the literature, demonstrating the importance of uninterrupted income over income amount in support of the planning process. Findings of this study have implications for professionals in the family and consumer sciences field and other practitioners assisting consumers with improving financial management outcomes.     

Nash Equilibrium and Decentralized Negotiation in Auctioning Divisible Resources

We consider the problem of software agents being used as proxies for the procurement of computational and network resources. Mechanisms such as single-good auctions and combinatorial auctions are not applicable for the management of these services, as assigning an entire resource to a single agent is often undesirable and appropriate bund sizes are difficult to determine. We investigate a divisible auction that is proportionally fair. By introducing the notion of price and demand functions that characterize optimal response functions of the bidders, we are able to prove that this mechanism has a unique Nash equilibrium for an arbitrary number of agents with heterogeneous quasilinear utilities. We also describe decentralized negotiation strategies which, with approrpate relaxation, converge locally to the equilibrium point. Given an agent with a sequence of jobs, we show how our analysis holds for a wide variety of objectives.     

Seasonal employee leadership and turnover intention in the hospitality and tourism industry: Serial mediation model workplace ostracism and work alienation

Based on the Conservation of Resources Theory, this research aims to examine the relationship between seasonal employee leadership (SEL) and turnover intention (TI). The data was obtained by administering a survey to 450 seasonal employees working in 15 five-star hotels in Antalya. The findings revealed that SEL reduces TI, which is an important problem for the tourism industry. The study results show that SEL was negatively related to workplace ostracism (WO) and work alienation (WA) and TI. Further, the findings show the serial mediating effect of WO and WA between SEL and TI. The study makes useful recommendations to managers to eliminate ostracism, curb the feeling of alienation and decrease TI.     

Financial Transparency and Sources of Hidden Capital in Turkish Banks

This paper investigates how changes in regulatory and economic environments affect the transparency of banks’ financial-statements. Reregulation and a volatile economy make Turkish banks the ideal sample. I disaggregate sources of both hidden and booked capital in Turkish banks traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange between 1988 and 2006. Hidden capital account for the difference between the accounting and opportunity-cost measures of a firm’s net worth. Increases in hidden capital in crisis periods indicate a greater reliance on government-contributed safety-net capital. The increase in hidden capital is more pronounced for large banks. Too-Big-To-Fail policies may explain why large banks are the beneficiaries of government-contributed capital.     

The causality between FDI and sector-specific production in Turkey: evidence from threshold cointegration with regime shifts

This article considers bidirectional nonlinear cointegration relation between FDI and industrial output in Turkey. The data cover the monthly period 2005:1–2013:10 for the time series of total industrial production, 36 sub-industrial sectors’ production and FDI. Following nonlinear threshold cointegration and VECMs, the article yields that (i) total industrial production and nine sub-industrial productions have positive long-run impact on FDI with significant error corrections, (ii) six sub-industrial productions have short-term influence on FDI, (iii) FDI has long-run positive impulse on total industrial production and nine sub-industrial productions with some significant error corrections and (iv) FDI affects four sub-industrial productions in the short run as well as in the long run. The results of VECMs from (i) also reveal that the all short-term adjustment parameters are found significant and powerful in 10 typical regimes (Regime-1s) and in 5 extreme regimes (Regime-2s). Finally, the outcome of VECMs from (iii) yields that short-term adjustment parameters are found significant and powerful in two typical regimes and in four extreme regimes. Eventually, considering FDI’s positive impact in the short and long run, this article suggests that policymakers promote specifically the FDI inflows to the sectors of intermediate goods, manufacture of beverages, manufacture of rubber and plastic and manufacture of other nonmetallic mineral products.     

The (small) blessing of foreign aid: further evidence on aid’s impact on democracy

In an empirical contribution to the literature of foreign aid, we estimate the impact of foreign aid on democracy in a panel of 93 developing economies during 1971–2010. We find that foreign aid promotes democracy, with the result robust to different estimation methodologies and control variables and to instrumenting for foreign aid.     

Exploring the mediating role of innovation in the effect of the knowledge management process on performance

The aim of this study is to explore the mediating role of innovation components in the relationship between knowledge management processes and performance. The research questions were investigated through questionnaires with top-level managers of a firm operating in the Turkish telecommunication industry. The results of the study indicated that knowledge management processes affect all innovation components. In addition to the direct effects of the knowledge management process on firm performance, marketing, product and process innovation are mediators in the relationship between the knowledge management process and performance. Finally, this research sheds light on how firms can manage their knowledge to gain a competitive advantage based on innovation.     

Using OWA aggregation technique in QFD: a case study in education in a textile engineering department

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematic approach that considers customer needs through design, production, marketing, and support stages. Customer needs are the main input for QFD, so voice of customer must be understood well and changes, innovations, and treatments must be held in this view. In QFD applications, determining the priorities of customer needs is a fairly important stage. This is mostly held by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) a multicriteria decision making technique. Nonetheless, Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) is an aggregation technique mostly used in decision making for multicriteria decision problems. So, combining these two techniques will give a different viewpoint for prioritizing the customer needs in QFD applications. The aim of this study is to show the use of Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) aggregation technique in QFD applications. For this purpose a case study in Dokuz Eylül University Textile Engineering Department was held. It was aimed to support the efforts on increasing the education quality by determining the students’ needs and opinions using QFD with OWA.