Business Ethics in Turkey: An Empirical Investigation with Special Emphasis on Gender

In today's complex business world, the question of business ethics is increasingly gaining importance as managers and employees face numerous ethical dilemmas in their jobs. The ethical climate in the Turkish business environment is also at a critical stage, and the business community as a whole is troubled by ethical problems. This study attempts to determine the effect of individual, managerial and organizational factors on the ethical judgments of Turkish managers, and to evaluate the ethical perceptions of these managers. The findings of this study reveal that the ethics score, the measure of ethical judgment, of Turkish managers differs significantly only with respect to gender and that female managers have higher ethics score than male managers. Other individual, managerial and organizational factors considered in this study do not have any significant effect on the ethical judgments of the managers. A comparative analysis between female and male managers in terms of their ranking of the eleven ethical business scenarios, ranking of the sixteen unethical acts, ranking of the factors influencing managers to engage in unethical practices, and ranking of the various parties to whom a company is socially responsible enables the researchers to enlighten the subject of business ethics in Turkey.     

Do Institutionalized Traditions Matter During Crisis? Employee Downsizing in Korean Manufacturing Organizations

This study examines the downfall of the permanent employment tradition in South Korean manufacturing organizations in the aftermath of the 1997 East Asian economic crisis. We explore whether organizations abandon their traditional institutionalized practices under discontinuous environmental change or despite the change continue these time‐honoured practices. We examine both the organizational factors that inhibit lay‐offs and performance indicators that trigger organizations to re‐evaluate their lifetime employment practices under drastic environmental upheaval. We test our hypotheses on 574 Korean manufacturing organizations and find that under discontinuous change: (1) economic and institutional factors simultaneously apply opposite forces on organizational actions; (2) organizational factors such as poor performance on productivity and export create a need for headcount reductions while factors such as size, domestic ownership, government support, and unionization create social and institutional pressures that inhibit downsizing; and (3) prior experience with downsizing moderates the relationship between institutional factors and further downsizing.     

Smallholder Demand for Maize Hybrids in Zambia: How Far do Seed Subsidies Reach?

We add to an emerging body of literature on input subsidies in Africa south of the Sahara. Our analysis focuses on demand for seed, characterising smallholders with a high predicted demand for hybrid seed who were not reached by the subsidy programme. We use cross‐sectional data from the 2010 agricultural season and an instrumented control function approach to test the hypothesis that the subsidy on hybrid maize seed in Zambia is selectively biased. Consistent with other literature, we find that the subsidy is a recursive determinant of seed demand, but in 2010, its recipients had more land, more assets, and lower poverty rates. Findings illustrate the social costs of the programme as currently designed and highlight the need to build alternative supply channels if poorer maize growers are to grow hybrid seed.     

Functional income distribution,capacity utilization,capital accumulation and productivity growth in Turkey: A post-Kaleckian analysis

The aim of this article is to examine the relation between functional income distribution, capacity utilization, capital accumulation and productivity in Turkey by identifying demand and overall regimes prevalent in the economy. For this purpose, we conducted an empirical analysis using different specifications of the post-Kaleckian model of Hein and Tarassow. This model defines and characterizes an overall regime by endogenizing productivity growth and integrating it into the models in this tradition. Empirical findings show that while the demand regime is wage-led, the overall regime turns out to be unstable in Turkey due to the destabilizing impact of productivity growth. This article contributes to the literature by being the first study that simultaneously identifies the demand and the overall regimes of an economy.     

Functional income distribution and growth in Thailand: A post Keynesian econometric analysis

The aim of this article is to analyze the effect of the income distribution between labor and capital on the growth performance of Thailand from a post Keynesian view. It rests on the theoretical model of Bhaduri and Marglin (1990 Bhaduri, A., and Marglin, S. “Unemployment and the Real Wage: The Economic Basis for Contesting Political Ideologies.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, December 1990, 14 (4), 375–393.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to see if an increase in the labor income share has a sufficient positive effect on consumption to offset a negative effect on investment and export demand. In order to investigate the question empirically we adopt and develop the approach of Stockhammer, Onaran, and Ederer (2009 Stockhammer, E.; Onaran, Ö.; and Ederer, S. “Functional Income Distribution and Aggregate Demand in the Euro-area.” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2009, 33 (1), 139–159.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Several measures of the labor income share are calculated to take into account the fact that wage labor represents only half of the total labor force and check the robustness of our results. We also introduce a new treatment of external trade to better integrate the price competitiveness of Thailand. The econometric investigation shows that the growth regime is profit-led over the period 1970–2011, which shows that rebalancing the Thai economy will be difficult and requires an overall change of strategy going beyond a simple prolabor policy.     

Information and consumer willingness to pay for biofortified yellow cassava: evidence from experimental auctions in Nigeria

In this article, we use the Becker‐DeGroot‐Marschak mechanism to estimate consumer demand for biofortified yellow cassava varieties in two states of Nigeria: Imo in the southeast and Oyo in the southwest. These two states exhibit distinct habitual product color preferences for staple food made with cassava. We estimate the effect of nutrition information campaigns and nature of planting material delivery institutions on consumer demand. Willingness to pay estimations account for the effect of product endowment, censoring in bids and nonpayment. In Oyo, consumers are willing to pay a premium for light yellow cassava variety even in the absence of nutrition information. The article finds that nutrition information results in a large and significant price premium for biofortified cassava in both states, and the nature of delivery institution has no significant effect.     

A latent class approach to investigating demand for genetically modified banana in Uganda

This study explores consumer acceptance and valuation of a genetically modified (GM) staple food crop in a developing country prior to its commercialization. We focus on the hypothetical introduction of a disease‐resistant GM banana variety in Uganda, where bananas are among the most important staple crops. A choice experiment is used to investigate consumer preferences for various attributes related to the banana (such as bunch size, technology, producer benefit, and price) and examine their opinions on GM foodstuff. Choice data come from 421 banana‐consuming households randomly selected from three regions of Uganda. A latent class model is used to investigate the heterogeneity in consumers’ preferences for selected attributes related to the banana and to profile consumers who are more or less likely to accept GM bananas. Our results reveal that there is significant heterogeneity in consumer preferences across our sample. GM bananas are valued the most by poorer households located in the rural areas of the Eastern region. These food‐insecure households would experience the highest benefits (i.e., welfare gains) from the commercial release of GM bananas. In contrast, urban consumers are less accepting of GM bananas, and they would experience significant welfare losses if GM banana is released. According to our welfare estimates, both the total welfare benefits acquired by the gainers and the total welfare losses borne by the losers of this technology are significant and large. These results suggest the need for further investigation of the overall welfare effects of the introduction of GM bananas on the Ugandan society as a whole.     

A pluralistic economics methodology for analysing landrace conservation on farms: a case study of Hungarian home gardens

Crop landraces contribute to food security and agricultural research that supports productivity or enhances product quality. The few extant landraces still grown in Hungary are found in home gardens, which are subsistence-oriented, small-scale family farms managed with traditional practices. A pluralistic economics methodology was developed to analyse the prospects of including landraces and home gardens in Hungary's National Rural Development Plan. The methodology draws from three fields of economic inquiry: institutional economics, environmental economics and agricultural economics. Data were collected using qualitative and quantitative approaches from over 300 farmers across 22 communities in three regions. This paper summarizes the methodology and highlights its advantages. A synopsis of findings is also reported.     

The Role of Home Gardens in Promoting Multi-Functional Agriculture in Hungary

Home gardens are small-scale family farms managed with traditional methods. Throughout Hungary's history, they have provided food security and diet quality to families who have faced volatile food prices and fluctuating real incomes. If markets function better with European Union (EU) accession, the conditions for reliance on home gardens may weaken—although not for all Hungarians. This paper reports the results of an interdisciplinary project investigating the economic value of home gardens of over 400 farmers in rural Hungary. We find that home gardens generate several public goods, including agro biodiversity and cultural heritage. The most economically, geographically and ecologically marginalized farmers not only manage the home gardens with the highest levels of public goods, but also derive the highest private benefits from them. Should Hungary seek to promote multi functional agriculture in line with the objectives of the EU's reformed Common Agricultural Policy, then provisions for home gardens would need to be incorporated into national programmes and legal frameworks. This research identifies some of the crops and the characteristics of farmers and farming communities that would constitute least cost targets for related programmes. Findings have implications for other EU member Central and Eastern European Countries with similar traditions of home gardening.     

Information,Certification and Demand for Food Safety: Evidence from an In‐store Experiment in Mumbai

Is demand for safe food in developing countries low because of limited ability to pay, or because of lack of consumer awareness and absence of credible certification? To answer this question we conducted a controlled market experiment in Mumbai, India, selling grapes with credible certification labels alongside unlabeled grapes while providing randomly selected consumers with information on salient features of food safety certification. We confirm that informed consumers are more likely to purchase labeled grapes, controlling for prior information and attitudes, and using two (intensive versus extensive) information treatments. Policies related to information/certification could be an important component of improving public health by mobilising latent demand for food safety and hence supply of safer food for the public.