Turkish Public Sector Research Articles

Research on the role of internal audits in ensuring the effectiveness of internal control systems in the Turkish public sector

The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of internal audit units in Turkish public administrations in ensuring and improving the effectiveness of their internal control systems within the framework of the internal control components of the Public Internal Control Standards, determined on the basis of the COSO (Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission) model. In our study, the survey method was used to collect data, and questions were answered according to a five-point Likert scale. In order to obtain evidence for the construct validity of the developed scale, a factor analysis was performed, and the components were examined in line with the factor analysis. In this context, statistical data obtained for each research question were examined with a one-way analysis of variance, a t-test and a factor analysis to determine whether there was a significant difference according to gender, experience in the field of auditing, education level, type of administration, or certification variables. The survey study was conducted among internal auditors who work in public administration in Turkey. It was determined that the internal auditors do not get sufficient support from senior management and employees in terms of organizational structure to ensure the effectiveness of the internal control system.

Illegitimate tasks and occupational outcomes: the impact of vertical collectivism

PurposeThis study aims to understand essential work and occupational consequences of employees’ illegitimate task (ILT) experiences (unreasonable and unnecessary task demands) under the influence of vertical collectivist (VC) values.Design/methodology/approachData were collected via a survey from 503 teachers in the Turkish public education sector. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.FindingsFindings of this study reveal that unnecessary tasks decrease employees’ professional identification and perceived occupational prestige, whereas unreasonable tasks weaken their workplace well-being. Results also show that employees with higher VC orientation feel these adverse effects to a lesser extent.Research limitations/implicationsThis study demonstrates that individual-level cultural values play a significant role in understanding task-related dynamics and consequences at the workplace. It brings new theoretical insights to job design and work stress literature regarding what similar factors can mitigate task pressures on employees.Practical implicationsA key practical insight from the findings is that human resources management experts should create a positive task environment where ILT demands are not welcome by analyzing jobs and skill requirements in detail, communicating task decisions regularly with employees and providing them with the necessary work support.Social implicationsUnderstanding the impact of ILT can greatly help to assess the quality of the education system and the value of teaching occupation in society.Originality/valueILT have been mainly discussed without considering the effect of different cultural orientations. This is the first study empirically showing the diverse effects of two ILT dimensions on essential occupational outcomes in connection to individual-level cultural influences.

Continuous Auditing as a Strategic Tool in Public Sector Internal Audit: The Turkish Case

In both public and private sectors, internal audit profession has become a fundamental requirement to improve business processes to achieve strategic goals. This is due to the fact that internal audit has a significant role with its value added risk-based approach and being trusted advisor in achieving strategic goals. Internal audit in public sector is a comparatively new practice in Turkey which became operative with the Public Financial Management and Control Law (No 5018) back in 2003 in order to ensure economic, efficient, effective utilization of public resources in line with the priorities and performance indicators of public administrations. After a short transition period, the public administrations have started to establish their internal audit functions with the full support of Internal Audit Coordination Board of Turkey based on IIA standards in such a tiny period of time. The major aim of this paper is to analyze the current state of public sector internal audit in Turkey and provide an example for the best practice. In this respect, internal audit function of the Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forest is chosen. This is because internal audit team of the Ministry uses a continuous auditing software which was developed in-house to conduct their audit plans, fieldworks and reports in digital. Firstly, the importance of continuous auditing and data analytics is explained based on relevant literature. Secondly, brief background information about the internal audit in Turkish public sector is given and internal audit function of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is introduced shortly. Thirdly, the data, methodology and empirical results of the continuous auditing case of the Ministry is presented. In conclusion, policy recommendations are made based on empirical findings in order to contribute literature.

Moving from Traditional Intranet to Digital Workplace in Public Sector: The Success Story of TurkStat Intranet

Bilgi, kamu örgütleri açısından stratejik bir öneme sahip midir? Kamu yöneticilerinin tamamına yakını bu soruya evet yanıtını verecektir. Lakin etkin ve verimli bir biçimde kullanılan yazılı kurumsal hafızaya sahip bir kamu kurumu görebilmek neredeyse imkânsız. Yazılı hale getirilemeyen veya yazılı hale getirilse dahi kişisel bilgisayarlarda hapsolan bilgi notu, sunum, tutanak veya rapor gibi "değerli" bilgiler, çalışanların kurumlardan ayrılması ile birlikte adeta buharlaşıp gitmektedir. Bu vaka çalışmasında süratle dijitalleşmekte olan çalışma ortamlarında, bireyler ve birimler arası etkin ve verimli bir örgütsel e-işbirliği için yeni nesil sosyal İntranet sistemlerine duyulan yüksek gereksinime değinilecektir. Bu kapsamda iş hayatında e-dönüşüm zaruretinin en erken farkına varan kamu kurumlarından biri olan Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu'nda 2012-2017 yılları arasında gerçekleşen İntranet devrimi detaylı bir biçimde incelenecektir. Dijital İntranet sistemleri ile birlikte (a) çalışanların zaman ve mekândan bağımsız olarak e-işbirliği yapabilmesi, (b) iletişim maliyetlerinin düşürülmesi, (c) kurumsal bilişim sistemlerinin İntranet ile entegre edilmesi ve (d) yazılı kurumsal hafıza oluşumunun tohumlarının atılması, gibi süreçlerin nasıl tesis edildiği açıklanmaya çalışılacaktır. Bu çalışma niteliksel bir araştırma olup, veriler gözlem, görüşme ve belge toplama tekniği ile toplanmıştır. Bu çalışma örgütsel e-işbirliği ve sanal uygulama topluluğu yaklaşımlarının Türk Kamu sektöründe hayata geçirilmiş ilk uygulama numunelerinden birini teşkil etmektedir.

The Factors Influence Online Tacit Knowledge Sharing in Public Organisations: A Qualitative Case Study from Turkey

Is knowledge considered a valuable asset in public sector? Most of the answers of top public managers would be yes to this question; however it is quite rare to see a public organisation with software systems to manage their knowledge repositories. Even top management support and the latest information technologies tools may not be enough to create an effective and efficient online tacit knowledge sharing (OTKS) system, as the case happened in Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), a large public organisation from Turkey. Even though the strategic decisions about OTKS are made by top managers, the success of these strategies depends on OTKS behaviour of employees. This article, therefore, proposed a framework and reports the results of an exploratory study based on an in-depth qualitative investigation of factors influence OTKS behaviour of not only public managers but also public employees (n=50) of TurkStat. The results indicated that the OTKS platform was mostly used by the younger and well educated public employees. Apart from that nine out of a total number of sixteen OTKS factors were considered significant by public employees and the top management. Interestingly the public officers and the public managers, as two parties, considered the other party had more responsibility and impact on fostering OTKS. Moreover, each OTKS factor had considerable different significance levels for the managers and the employees. This paper is one of the first studies to explore the factors influence OTKS in a Turkish public sector institution from two different hierarchical perspectives.

FACTORS AFFECTING ON THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS' MANAGER CHOICE

Motivation/Background: The aim of this research to evaluate that Public Perception on the Factors that Affecting Turkish Public Administrators' Manager Choice in Turkey.
 Method: Quantitative research method was used in the research and the data obtained from the survey method were analyzed with SPSS (SPSS 16.0 for Windows, SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL, USA).
 Results: According to public perception, Turkish public administrators act in a favorable manner in the selection of managers.
 Conclusions: According to the result of the research, participants think that the administrators in Turkish public sector mostly pay attention to the criteria for manager choice: relationship and citizenship factors, external influences and political factors and ethnicity and sect factors but they do not take representation and capability factors and merit criteria into account.

Emek Piyasalarında Eğitim Uyumsuzlukları ve Sektörler Arasında Ücretlere Etkisi: Türkiye Örneği

The incidence of mismatch and its pay effects vary not only across countries but also across sectors due to different institutional arrangements. The first aim of the paper is to estimate education mismatches in the Turkish labor market. Our second aim is to distinguish the impact of education mismatches on wages in public and private sectors. The results of the analysis show returns on overeducation are lower than required education in both sectors similar to many other country examples. Moreover, we also show that wage differences between overeducation and required education are smaller in the private sector, and through Oaxaca decomposition method most of it can be explained by endowments. Lastly, the effect of undereducation on wages differs across sectors and we conclude that human capital model is not applicable to Turkish public sector.

Measuring Strategic Management Maturity: An Empirical Study in Turkish Public and Private Sector Organizations

Measuring Strategic Management Maturity: An Empirical Study in Turkish Public and Private Sector Organizations

Public sector reforms to fight corruption in Turkey: a case of failed Europeanization?

ABSTRACTThis article examines the practical application of legal reforms to fight corruption in Turkey, focusing on three policy sectors: civil administration, public finance management and public procurement. Facing increasing pressure, incumbent governments have adopted international anti-corruption norms and programs in the last two decades. However, the adoption and adaptation of formal institutions tends to remain decoupled from informal behavioral practices, thereby curbing the effectiveness of Europeanization in the Turkish public sector – albeit to varying degrees. The policy comparison of this article shows that external anti-corruption efforts, especially those initiated by the EU, can help domestic actors to address the problem of decoupling when certain domestic factors are present.

Exploring the structure and meaning of public service motivation in the Turkish public sector: a test of the mediating effects of job characteristics

ABSTRACTUsing a data set consisting of 315 middle-managers at the district level in the Turkish public sector, we develop a structural equation model (SEM) for assessing the impact of empowerment and stewardship on public service motivation (PSM) through job characteristics. The results demonstrate that stewardship and empowerment are distinct ‘levers’ that managers can use in novel ways to influence PSM; and cultural context may factor into the manipulation of these levers. We find that job-based mediators may not compliment leadership styles and self-generating rewards, but, rather work separately in their appeal to PSM.

Creative Accounting Practices and Measurement Methods: Evidence from Turkey

Abstract A fiscal rule imposed when the budget is not transparent yields more creative accounting to circumvent it and less fiscal adjustment, generating hidden deficits/debts in public sector. This study focuses on creative accounting practices of governments and adds to the literature by measuring hidden debts of the Turkish public sector ranging from the period 1989 to 2010. The author shows that the IMF has been misinformed, indeed has been misled by the Turkish authorities regarding the magnitude of public debt stock in the late 90’s. The lacking information deteriorated the IMF’s forecasts, which might be one of the main reasons for the failure of the IMF’s planned fiscal consolidation at the outset of 2000–2001 crisis. The author’s methodology can easily be adapted to any other country in order to identify the different margins on which governments can cheat and manipulate the Government Finance Statistics.

Lifelong Learning Case Study from Turkish Public Sector: Business Process Management in Social Security Operations

The importance of Lifelong Learning is increasing in the international competitive environment. Many companies and public administration try to identify and modify their Lifelong Learning strategies for their sustainability. The purpose of this Lifelong Learning case study is underlying the importance of the phenomena in the Turkish public sector. Business process management was used as a tool for designing and improving the operations in the center and rural area offices of Social Security Institution. The case study was held by an expert of the institution in terms of Lifelong Learning. The improved and managed business processes was clarified in the study in detail. The study states that if there were not Lifelong Learning phenomena in action there would not be any improvement and evaluation of this improvement in the system.

Perceived Managerial and Leadership Effectiveness within Turkish Public Sector Hospitals

The main purpose of this study is to report the results of a study of managerial and leadership effectiveness carried out within Turkish public sector hospitals. ‘Effective’ and ‘least effective/ineffective’ manager and managerial leader behavior, as observed by managerial and non-managerial employees were collected using the critical incident technique. These critical incidents were then content analyzed to identify a smaller number of discrete behavioral statements and criteria of effectiveness.

Empirical study of public sector employee loyalty and satisfaction

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the factors which determine the level of public employees' job satisfaction and as result help to have effective and efficient management system in the public sector, in developing countries such as Turkey.Design/methodology/approachBased on theoretical considerations, a model was proposed linking the employee satisfaction and loyalty (ESL) constructs. The paper exhibits the findings of a satisfaction and loyalty survey of employment factors within the Turkish public sector. The survey was conducted in 2009 and covered 220 employees within the Istanbul Branch of a Social Security Institution in Turkey. A model was developed by including effecting factors of employee satisfaction, their relations and effects of employee satisfaction on employee loyalty. Partial least squares structural equation model was employed to test the model in the public insurance sector in Turkey.FindingsData analysis reveals that there is a strong relationship between ESL in a branch of a public sector Social Security Institution in Turkey. Training and personal development was found the most effecting factor of customer satisfaction. The study also finds a positive relationship between working conditions and satisfaction.Originality/valueThe paper reveals the relationship between the employee satisfaction and affecting factors in the public sector in Turkey. These factors are developed only incidentally in the public sector in Turkey. Human resource management (HRM) applications such as measuring employee satisfaction, performance development are widely used in private sector. Specifically, in developing countries such as Turkey, these applications are rarely used in the public sector. Therefore, the paper advocates the use of HRM applications in the public sector in a developing country.

A comparative study on state reform in the light of the EU and international legal documents and practices: a legal analysis of Turkish regulations on ethics in the government

In order to modernise and democratise the Turkish administrative system and align it with EU standards, public reform is essential. Good governance, transparency and fight against corruption are indispensable components of a successful reform programme. In this respect, improving transparency, accountability and effectiveness in public service require an effective ethics infrastructure. In the field of accountability and transparency, the law for financial disclosure and combating bribery and corruption dated 1990 and numbered 3628, has a very important role in the fight against corruption in the Turkish public sector. However, the law prohibits accepting gifts from foreign private organisations but does not regulate any prohibition in the case of accepting gifts from Turkish private organisations. This is a very important gap in this law and has to be amended immediately in order to include absolute prohibition with regard to accepting gifts and private interests from both Turkish and foreign nationals and private organisations.

An applied stochastic model of the quality–quantity trade-off in the public health care sector

It is a striking feature of the many of the developing country public service sectors that the sectors in question often overproduce the quantity of services but underproduce the quality. This feature, which is exemplified in this paper, is rooted in a wide spectrum of economic and sociological factors ranging from the economic and sociological profile of the service receiving people to the asymmetric density of service-receiving population across their regions. This feature, we conjecture, is a source of a considerable degree of suboptimality in some of the developing countries. If our conjecture is correct, correcting such suboptimalities is likely to yield significant welfare improvements that could help speed up the process of development in the underdeveloped regions of the world. To analyze the supoopimalites in question, we will first develop a concept (and a model) of optimal quality in the public service sector, which indicates the level of quality that maximizes expected public satisfaction subject to available resources. Resources are used in an efficient manner to produce the service in question. The concept and the model in the paper make a needed contribution to the quality discourse by presenting a way of determining the quality improvements (or adjustments) necessary to achieve optimum in the public service sector. The paper presents an application (a case study) of this new concept in the public healthcare sector in Turkey, and explores the differences between the actual and optimal quality in the sector in question. It turns out that there is a considerable difference between the actual and optimal levels of quality (as well as those of quantity) in the Turkish public healthcare sector in an overpopulated city (Istanbul), indicating a significant overproduction of quantity and underproduction of quality. Thus, to achieve the optimal levels, the sector should increase quality and reduce quantity by a considerable margin. The quantified differences (gaps) between actual and optimal levels point out a considerable room for welfare improvement. Optimum-seeking adjustments closing these gaps could be shown to lead to considerable satisfaction and welfare gains, the measurement of which is worthy of future research.

Management as an Agent of Cultural Change in the Turkish Public Sector

This article explores the impact of public sector managerialism, and specifically the government's strategy of encouraging managers to adopt business values and associated behaviors, on cultural change in the Turkish health sector. The Turkish case provides a model of interdependence between managerial initiatives and cultural change, in that the government has tried to win over the hearts and minds of staff to a new attitude and style and has striven to overcome resistance from managers in a variety of ways in order to ensure that new managerial techniques and innovations “take root.” Such cultural transformation has been enabled by the introduction of new managerial techniques into the public organizations. Although Turkish public organizations had an established hierarchical-professional culture, which has been resistant to new concepts and practices, there are signs that managerial initiatives in the health sector have begun to transform the existing organizational culture toward an entrepreneurial, adaptive, and innovative culture.

A decision model proposal for construction contractor selection in Turkey

This study proposes a multi-criteria decision model for construction contractor selection in the Turkish public sector. Current selection methods are reviewed and three main concepts are generated for selection: cost, time, and quality. The proposed selection model uses evaluation criteria related to these concepts and has a process with two main stages: contractor prequalification and the choice of the eligible (compromised) bidder among prequalified contractors. This model can be used as a decision support system by project owners in order to identify an eligible contractor to be awarded the contract.

State Reform in Turkey: Reasons, Needs and Strategies

The state structure in Turkey including all its branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial) at both the national and local levels has been shown to be ineffective, even irrelevant, to the ingrained demographic, social, economic and political exigencies of the country. One of the main reasons behind this is the collapse of public finance. Conventional rhetoric limiting solutions to administrative reform fails to provide a sufficiently broad enough context within which public sector reform in Turkey can be discussed. Turkey's determination to become a full member of the EU also necessitates a comprehensive and radical overhaul of the Turkish public sector with respect to efficiency and productivity. Five main strategies are proposed to assist Turkey in overcoming its state governance predicament: initiating and carrying out a state‐wide reform by employing modern principles of public management; understanding and solving the problem of internal and external debts; enhancing the conditions of governance; reintroduc‐ing and strengthening the principle of meritocracy in public sector and cooperating more with the EU.

Quality management in the Turkish public sector: a survey

AbstractThis article assesses the challenges of introducing Quality Management (QM) in the Turkish public sector in two pioneering central institutions. A survey was conducted with the aim of exploring in particular the views of the workforce on the feasibility and prospects of QM. Findings revealed that despite the differences in both the practice and the perceptions, the workforce had a positive attitude and shared an awareness of the need for a comprehensive reform that included wide utilisation of QM. The results also imply that the success of QM is conditioned by the approach adopted and the organisational context. Considering the fact that QM necessitates long‐term commitment and adequate resources, its future cannot be isolated from general problems of the Turkish public administration system. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.