Business and Economics Research Journal

1-14

Authors: Famil Şamiloğlu, Ali İhsan Akgün

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship link working capital management and performance such as profitability between accountant receivable period, accountant payable period and cash conversion cycle on Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) during the last ten years.This paper examines the relationship between working capital management and profitability. A sample of 120 Turkish manufacturing firms listed on ISE for a period 10 years from 2003 to 2012 was selected. Multiple linear regression models have been used to find out the relationship between working capital management and firm performance in the context of Turkey. The findings of this paper show a significant and negative relationship between account receivable period and return on asset, return on equity, operating profit margin and net profit margin in the manufacturing industry. We expect that managers can create value for shareholders by reducing accountant receivable period, accountant payable period, cash conversion cycle.

29-41

Authors: Nida Abdioğlu

This paper examines the impact of managerial ownership on cash holding decisions of the firms listed in Borsa Istanbul 100 index between 2005 and 2013. Main aim of the study is to analyse whether there is any evidence for managerial alignment or managerial entrenchment effect on the corporate cash holdings. A non-monotonic relation between managerial ownership and cash holding is found. The findings indicate that managerial ownership aligns the interests of managers with those of shareholders. These firms with managerial ownership prefer to hold less cash. In addition, it is reported that at higher level of managerial ownership, entrenchment effect of managers is seen. Managers practice their own interests at the expense of shareholders’ and the firms with higher level of managerial ownership hold more cash. The results also reveal that prior year’s cash holding positively affects this year’s cash holding. Firm size, liquidity and tangibility are also effective on cash holding decisions of Turkish firms.

63-82

Authors: Elif Özlem Aşkın, Serap Barış

In this paper, the effects of social capital on women’s entrepreneurs which is an important way of increasing employment opportunities for women were examined in Tokat province. Within this framework, it has been aimed to suggest proposals about increasing women participation to employment as entrepreneurs and providing women entrepreneurs to utilize the social capital effectively in order to enhance their contiditions in employment. As a result of the study, it has been found that the social capital defined as strong ties with families, relatives and friends is effective on women employment as entrepreneurs when starting a business and sustaining it; but, weak ties defined as the cooperation with public institutions and organizations, non-govermental organizations, universities, professional organizations and other firms in the sector which provide greater and more chances have been found to be insufficient for obtaining resource and for their success compared to strong ties. Lower levels of education, responsibilities related to gender based occupational division cause women's social networks to be limited. Pursuing the policies which enhance the social capital of women entrepreneurs in order to provide them to benefit from the social capital effectively is highly significant for increasing employment by the way of women entrepreneurship in the labor market.

103-113

Authors: Fatih Kaplan, Ali Rıza Aktaş

The paper aims to research the effects of real oil prices on real exchanges rates in oil dependent countries. Panel data for 1995-2014 of 5 oil dependent countries is taken into consideration for this purpose. The originality of the paper is its use of new approach with cross-sectional dependency and cross-country heterogeneity both taken into account. Panel data analysis suggest that, increase in the real oil prices has a positively effect on real exchange rates. Moreover, when countries are taken into account separately, increase in the real oil prices has no effect on USA and China, positively effects in Canada and Mexico, but negatively effects real exchange rates in Russia.

135-148

Authors: Haluk Erdem, Meral Çalış Duman

This study aims to determine the effects of perceived quality of meal service provided by organization on organizational commitment and job satisfaction. In order to analyse these relationships, data is gathered from public employees (n=204) whose lunch is organizationally provided in Bitlis Province. The results of the analysis (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, correlation and regression analysis) demonstrate that taste and management factors of perceived quality of organizationally provided meal service affect employees’ emotional commitment positively and significantly. Besides, the dimensions of the perceived quality of meal service namely taste, hygiene and managerial are observed to have no relationship with continual and normative commitment. In addition, management factors related to the way meal is served affect employees’ job satisfaction positively and significantly. It is also found that the demographic variables such as gender age and education have no significant effects on examined variables. The results are discussed through comparing with the studies in the literature.

167-201

Authors: Engin Çakır, Muhsin Özdemir

Six sigma method widely applied in production and service businesses is known as a project-oriented method. In six sigma method, selection of the prior project among others can be considered as a multi-criteria decision-making problem. The conducted literature review has revealed that there is a large number of methods to select six sigma projects. It is more appropriate to use fuzzy multi-criteria decision making methods in project selection since evaluation criteria of six sigma projects include uncertainties. The aim of this study is to select the most appropriate project as a result of evaluating the projects by Fuzzy VIKOR, Fuzzy TOPSIS and Fuzzy COPRAS as methods of fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making and integrating the ranking scores obtained from each method by Copeland method. The proposed method has been implemented in a large scale production company, operating in Aydın ASTİM Organized Industrial Zone.