An analysis of the carrying capacity and life process risks of UK and Turkish insurance intermediaries

The primary aim of this paper is to examine the strategic risks associated with environmental selection and how this affects the life process risks of insurance intermediaries. To achieve this aim; firstly the carrying capacity of UK and Turkish insurance intermediaries is calculated and, secondly, the demographic, ecological and environmental variables that affect that carrying capacity are examined. Our study provides two contributions to the literature. For the first time, carrying capacity analysis is applied for an organisational community. As much as previous studies assume the existence of carrying capacity as theoretical, it has not been previously calculated on a quantitative basis. The second contribution is related to risk and insurance literature, specifically the life process risks of insurance intermediaries. The main rationale behind that analysis is the construction of a map that will simplify the strategic risk and reward decisions of insurers as to which areas are potentially profitable, or are indicative of fruitful relationships with intermediaries. Additionally, this research enables us to identify the areas that have potential for development in terms of insurance. For this reason, uncertainties relating to the selection of authorised brokers/agents as a strategic risk is, perhaps, minimised. Moreover, we have examined whether probable variables that can affect carrying capacity have contextual differences or not. The findings exhibit that there is contextual differentiations concerning the variables that affect the carrying capacity of both countries.     

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.     

On a conjecture related to the ruin probability for nonhomogeneous exponentially distributed claims

Recently, some recursive formulas have been obtained for the ruin probability evaluated at or before claim instants for a surplus process under the assumptions that the claim sizes are independent, nonhomogeneous Erlang distributed, and independent of the inter-claim revenues, which are assumed to be independent, identically distributed, following an arbitrary distribution. Based on numerical examples, a conjecture has also been stated relating the order in which the claims arrive to the magnitude of the corresponding ruin probability. In this paper, we prove this conjecture in the particular case when the claims are all exponentially distributed with different parameters.     

Forecasting Turkey’s Credit Ratings with Multivariate Grey Model and Grey Relational Analysis

The concept of credit rating rooted back to mid-nineteenth century has become one of the most important elements in the world economy together with the globalization period gradually accelerating in the last two decades and increasing the interaction and sensitivity in the international markets. With the globalization and deepening in the financial markets; the effect, reliability and stability of knowledge of the actors who are in charge for directing the global capital flows have quite a big importance in terms of the decisions to be made in the future. In this process, credit rating agencies eliminating the information asymmetry between the countries and institutions who want to create financial resource by borrowing from the savings owners and foreign institutions. Credit ratings determined by the mentioned organizations are accepted as an indicator of the countries to meet the financial obligations in other words their creditworthiness. For Turkey’s economy having a structure with a high level of external financing needs in terms of accelerating the growth and development process, it is inevitable to have an international creditworthiness increasing long-term investment tendency meeting foreign capitals’ trust search. In this study, firstly the determinants of the credit ratings given by credit rating agencies are determined and then forecasting Turkey’s future credit ratings by combining them with multivariate grey model and grey relational analysis are performed.

     

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.     

Intercompany mobbing: the effects of company growth

Exploring the concept of mobbing, we have conducted a study of small and middle sized enterprises (commonly referred to as SMSE). In this study we observed corporate policies of repression and intimidation while taking into consideration the aim of these policies and their possible consequences. The ultimate purpose of this work is to shed light onto forthcoming academic studies of the same topic. Our focus has been the effects of the various presses, forms of harassment and market entry prevention carried out by companies that dominate the market against those companies entering the market and those already competing in the market. To determine these effects on 150 companies that conduct business in Turkey, we created a survey consisting of 15 categories. The results have been depicted with charts and graphs. The conclusion of the investigation has found that many of the attitudes which comprise of mobbing acts can be seen in the mutual behavior of the companies that work in the Turkish labor market. Although there are a number of reasons for the prevalence of the mobbing culture in Turkish business, it’s our belief that the Turkish labor market codes of conduct and regulations influence the perpetuation of ruthless behaviors between different companies.     

A mathematical approach to the boolean minimization problem

Any minimization problem involves a computer algorithm. Many such algorithms have been developed for the boolean minimizations, in diverse areas from computer science to social sciences (with the famous QCA algorithm). For a small number of entries (causal conditions in the QCA) any such algorithm will find a minimal solution, especially with the aid of the modern computers. However, for a large number of conditions a quick and complete solution is not easy to find using an algorithmic approach, due to the extremely large space of possible combinations to search in. In this article I will demonstrate a simple alternative solution, a mathematical method to obtain all possible minimized prime implicants. This method is not only easier to understand than other complex algorithms, but it proves to be a faster method to obtain an exact and complete boolean solution.     

A predictive filtering approach for clarifying bibliometric datasets: an example on the research articles related to industry 4.0

ABSTRACT

This study proposes a filtering approach based on text classification and a fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making technique to select the relevant bibliometric data for further analyses in the scope of bibliometrics, scientometrics, and related methodologies. The proposed approach is illustrated on Industry 4.0 and internet of things which are the concepts that currently draw utmost attention with a growing number of research and applications. Accordingly, various findings are presented revealing the characteristics of the selected bibliometric data with the help of text and network analytics. The potential contribution of this study is two-fold such that the study not only suggests a novel approach for clarifying the retrieved bibliometric data but also emphasises the mainstream research areas and directions of Industry 4.0 along with the concept of the internet of things. Thus, an analysis framework with computing techniques has been used to reveal the characteristics of literature in a field of technology.