Business Information Management - Master's degree

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  • ItemOpen Access
    Financial liberalization in Turkey and the evolution of ownership structures
    (Bilkent University, 2023-08) Mıhcı, Atamert
    This thesis describes how ownership structures of Turkish listed companies changed from 1986 to 2020. The financial liberalization program, implemented in the 1980s, aimed to increase financial literacy and expand the investor base. The opening of the stock exchange, Istanbul Stock Exchange, (ISE) in 1986 was a part of the financial liberalization program. The opening of a modern stock market aimed to widen the investor base and spread firm control across society. I examine the 40 companies first listed on Istanbul Stock Exchange in 1986. One company is dropped from the sample due to missing data for 1986. Six of the remaining 39 companies had ceased operations by 2020. Thirty-three companies are still in operation in 2020 with 6 of them going private in the interim. Two of the six private companies did not have publicly available ownership data. The largest shareholder, on average, controlled 34 percent, the three largest shareholders 61 percent, and the five largest controlled 65 percent of shares in 1986 in the 31 sample companies. The largest shareholder controlled 59 percent, the three largest shareholders 74 percent, and the five largest controlled 76 percent of shares in 2020. I found that ownership concentration, the measure of how control is concentrated across the largest shareholders, increased in Turkish firms from their first listing in 1986 to 2020. Contrary to the aims of the financial liberalization program, the results suggest, ownership became more concentrated in the hands of the largest shareholders.
  • ItemOpen Access
    How do consumers self-license themselves in the context of ethical consumption?: a qualitative approach to moral self-licensing
    (Bilkent University, 2022-07) Çelik, Hafize
    Ethical decision making processes of people have been a locus of research across disciplines because morality is considered as an important yet complex tenet of social life. The research to date has aimed at exploring the inconsistency in ethical decision-making processes of individuals to comprehensively apprehend the issue. A research stream on moral self-licensing (ML) effect has revealed that individuals are more likely to follow an amoral behavior if they established moral behaviors earlier. Since the ML phenomenon has been investigated mainly via the experimental approaches, the nature of ML has been almost exclusively explained by a single empirical model, called moral credits model, and therefore, the ML effect has remained rather underexplored. As such, the main objective of this thesis is to explore ML in the context of ethical consumption in which the ethical decision-making processes are at the forefront. With a methodological shift from the dominant research stream on the ML effect, this thesis embraces interpretivist approaches based on consumers lived experiences and accounts about moral dilemmas during the ethical consumption behaviors by interviews and projective methods. The findings of the thesis suggest that there are alternative models of moral self-licensing: reversed moral credentials, moral supplement, moral societal position, and moral systemic position. These findings not only expand the definition of ML but also inform some neglected aspects of the attitude behavior gap in ethical consumption. The findings of the thesis are expected to set a scholarly dialogue to enhance the growth and expansion of ethical markets.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Untangling the complex nature of household food waste drivers through fuzzy cognitive mapping
    (Bilkent University, 2021-08) Özgen Genç, Tuğçe
    Since reducing household food waste (HFW) has serious environmental, social, and economic implications, researchers across disciplines have investigated this phenomenon from multiple angles and identified a substantial number of drivers that account for HFW. Despite these efforts, empirical investigation of the complex web of HFW drivers is still in its infancy. The methodologies that have been used to investigate the phenomenon have been generally insufficient in capturing the complexity surrounding consumers’ food waste behavior. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to provide a more complete representation of this complexity. To this end, a distinctive method, fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) was used to demonstrate the system of HFW drivers. Through an iterative process between the content analysis of previous studies and expert opinion, the most prevalent HFW drivers as system concepts and their causal relationships were synthesized and consolidated in the first stage. Then in the second stage, this well-refined framework was transformed into an FCM that provides a consistent base to conduct simulations and to compare the HFW-reducing intervention alternatives. In the third stage, the most influential drivers were revealed, and the ambiguities due to conflicting findings reported in the literature were resolved. Then, through scenario analysis, intervention alternatives were compared based on their impact on HFW. In the final section, findings of each stage were integrated and discussed with their theoretical, methodological, and practical implications.
  • ItemOpen Access
    No silver bullet to boost employee change supportive behaviors: the fit between gender, regulatory focus, and managerial influence tactics
    (Bilkent University, 2021-06) Amirkabiri Razian, Salar
    Strategic change is central for organizational performance and survival. Managers deploy proactive influence tactics to boost employees’ change supportive behaviors. However, a one-size-fits-all approach is not suitable due to employees’ idiosyncratic differences. Drawing on the regulatory focus theory and gender theories, this research theorizes and tests the effect of the fit between employees’ regulatory focus, gender and the tactic on change supportive behaviors. By using the change readiness framework, the influence tactics’ correspondence with regulatory focus across genders are mapped. A 5×2×2 experimental factorial design is employed to test the fit hypotheses. The results show that when an influence tactic fits with both employees’ regulatory focus and gender, it promotes employees’ championing which is a proactive behavior. Moreover, the mere fit between the tactic and regulatory focus irrespective of gender engenders cooperation which is an adaptive behavior. Theoretical implications for the change management, gender and regulatory focus literatures are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Sustainable growth of non-financial firms : evidence from emerging economies
    (Bilkent University, 2017-03) Mubeen, Muhammad
    Higgins’ (1977, 1981, 2008) model of Sustainable growth has been widely used in corporate finance application. This research investigates whether Higgins’ model of sustainable growth is underestimated as suggested by the theoretical paper of Chen (2013). For this purpose, data of seven emerging economies between the years 2000 and 2015 have been used. Firms issuing secondary equity were identified from the data set. An independent t-test was used to test the difference of mean of growth for firms issuing secondary equity and firms not issuing secondary equity. Additionally, a panel regression model with random effect model is employed to identify the factors causing difference in sustainable growth and actual realized growth. The results show that Higgins model of sustainable growth is underestimated. While identifying the possible factor of underestimation, secondary equity issue is a significant factor in five emerging economies (Pakistan, India, Korea, Indonesia and Brazil) and insignificant in two emerging economies (China and Turkey). Moreover, while exploring firm-specific factors as a reason of underestimation of SGR model, we found that in the case of nonfinancial firms, leverage and size are playing important roles whereas profitability and dividend policy yield mixed results.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Predicting business failures in non-financial turkish companies
    (Bilkent University, 2015) Okay, Kaan
    The prediction of corporate bankruptcies has been widely studied in the finance literature. This paper investigates business failures in non-financial Turkish companies between the years 2000 and 2015. I compare the accuracies of different prediction models such as multivariate linear discriminant, quadratic discriminant, logit, probit, decision tree, neural networks and support vector machine models. This study shows that accounting variables are powerful predictors of business failures one to two years prior to the bankruptcy. The results show that three financial ratios: working capital to total assets, net income to total assets, net income to total liabilities are significant in predicting business failures in non-financial Turkish companies. When the whole sample is used, all five models predict the business failures with at least 75% total accuracy, where the decision tree model has the best accuracy. When the hold-out samples are used, neural networks model has the best prediction power among all models used in this study.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Total quality management and an application in a Türkish infantry battalion
    (Bilkent University, 2001) Kasımlıoğlu, Gökhan
    This study presents a brief summary of total quality management, its history and its tools; offers an overview of a process improvement procedure by U.S. Department of Defense; and a sample process improvement application in nutrition system of a Turkish Infantry battalion. The main purpose of the study is to show the advantages of using Total Quality Management tools in military processes. For this purpose, a quality improvement team established in a Turkish Infantry Battalion, consisting of 9 enlisted soldiers and a lieutenant, improved the nutrition system by using seven tools of the Total Quality Management. Project related with contracting nutrition system to a civilian catering firm -which is also in trial period in some of Turkish Army Units - is benchmarked cooperatively.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Examination of the four selected food industry sub-sectors in Turkey and in the European Community
    (Bilkent University, 1994) Çetin, Demet
    A Customs Union will be established between Turkey and the European Community in 1995. The establishment of this union has two essential realities in itself. Firstly, Turkey will be the first country to enter such a union without being a member of the Community. Secondly, Turkish companies will face intense competition from their European counterparts, providing quality standards, cost advantages and the ability to take advantage of the non-tariff barriers; rather than the pursuit of the increases and decreases in the customs duties and funds in order to get arbitrage opportunities from them, while ignoring the quality of the product most of the time. The four selected food industry sub-sectors to be examined are chocolate and confectionery, processed flour products, milk and dairy products and red meat industries. The reason for their being chosen as pilot sectors, is their involving the most intensely consumed products in Turkey and the European Community countries. Chocolate, confectionery and processed flour products constitute a total of 44.3% of the food products of the top ten sub-sectors consumed in the Community; in a similar manner, milk, dairy products and red meat products are the most consumed food products in Turkey.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Role of ISO 9000 standards in TQM applications
    (Bilkent University, 1996) Erkazancı, Ersoy
    Towards 21st century, quality has become one of the most important tools for being competitive. Quality management and quality systems have been recognized by several firms and managers today. ISO 9000 standards, as quality assurance systems and Total Quality Management (TQM), as a quality management philosophy are questioned to be alternative or complementary for each other. In this thesis, a real life case, KORDSA, which has applied both tools, has been investigated in order to see the relationship of ISO 9000 and Total Quality Management.