Motivation of EFL Students in Turkey

The global marketplace is characterized by various changes occurring in economic, social, natural, and technological areas. As such, experts in numerous fields are still working to revise various systems and infrastructures to operate in a robust manner within the new realities of today. This paper focuses on part of the educational aspect of that massive effort by examining the intrinsic motivation of Turkish students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and its potential impact on the country's long-term economic sustainability since English remains the global business language. The paper commences with an introduction to the realities of contemporary globalism that underscore the very purpose for this work, and the subsequent sections present and then synthesize all material to provide suggestions to create a paradigm shift in thinking required for teaching EFL in Turkey.

International Business Initiatives of the Turkish Enterprises in Global Trade

The amount of trade and international business volume in the world has amounted considerably as a result of the fast moving globalization and declining borders especially after the 1990s. International business and trade are important tools for countries and enterprises to increase their volumes of production and commerce as well as enhance employment, increase the national income and raise revenue for enterprises to make further investments. Turkey is located at the threshold of Europe and Asia, consolidating East and West, and North and South at the convergence of various trade routes. However, despite of being close to various countries, a great deal of Turkey's export potential is focused on the EU and developed countries. However, the production means in Turkey are not adequate, so it imports factors of production from abroad by way of international business operations. Thus, the aim of this study is to review the theory of globalization, international business, firm internationalization process of businesses, impact direction of multinational businesses as well as the commercial operations of the Turkish enterprises, real and commercial abilities of the Turkish firms and international business activities on the global basis; compare this to its entire trade volume and propose comments on these issues resting on credible national and international publications and figures.

Causes of Growth of Turkish Economy

This chapter provides an analysis of the proximate causes of growth of the Turkish Economy. Previous researches on this issue have been not only critically reviewed but also used to provide some additional insights on long run growth of Turkish economy. Emphasis of the paper is, however, on causes of growth in the era of globalization. Sources of growth have been analyzed for different sub-periods of this era in order to see how different reforms, like trade and capital account liberalizations, economic crisis and post-crisis policy measures and similar have influenced economic growth of Turkey from 1980 till 2013. Apart from conventional sources of growth analysis, demand and industry side sources of growth analysis have been also given. A lot of interesting insights have been obtained from these analyses.

Resources on the Stage

This study examines the impact of firm resources on ICT adoption by the Turkish business enterprises using firm level data. The data for this study consists of 3633 firms in manufacturing and services sectors. We investigate the effect of firm resources on the adoption of ICT by using ordered logit model. Adoption of ICT is an index variable including four categories which ranges from single technology ownership to four technology ownership. These technologies are local area network (LAN), wireless local area network (WLAN), intranet, and extranet. We assume that these technologies are complementary. We find that firms do not need to use same amount of resources while adopting single technology as they would while adopting complementary technologies. In the adoption of complementary technologies, the effect of firm size, trade openness, human capital, purposes of ICT usage and environmental factors such as region and industry increases. On the other hand, full complementarity among technologies does not require the full exploitation of the firm resources. As a result of inefficient use of firm resources, single and two technology owner firms, which are composed of resource-limited small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), do not accomplish the technology adoption benefits of the three and four technology owners. We discuss a set of policy implications to promote the efficient use of firm resources for single and two technology owner firms. The effect of firm resources on the adoption of complementary technologies is analysed in this study which has not been investigated before in this context.

The Comparison of the Shadow Economy in Turkey and European Countries

As informal activities are considered as a crime, that kind of activities are being carried out secretly and their detection is difficult in most cases. Along with difficulties in determining the size of informal economy exactly, recently developed models and opportunities to reach reliable data enable making realistic estimations in regard to shadow economy. This study benefits from 11 different studies estimating informality in European countries and Turkey by using physical input, currency demand, DYMIMIC, and MIMIC methods. Common conclusion acquired from these studies is that informality rate in Turkey is higher than EU15 countries and EU13 countries –except for Hungary, Cyprus, Latvia, Croatia and Bulgaria. In addition to the comparison of these data, the reasons of the emergence of informal economy, measuring methods, and policy proposals in order to hamper informality in Turkey are also discussed.

Strategic Positioning of Turkey Agricultural Products on the Agricultural World Market

Applying a strategic management perspective, particularly the BCG tool, this chapter demonstrates that the agricultural products exported by Turkey are distributed unevenly on the four cells of the global agricultural markets matrix: almost of its products (236 products or 85.20% of its portfolio) are Question Marks, two products are a Star, one product is a Cash cow, and 38 products are Dogs. Such a situation creates important strategic choices for the leaders of the country and for its businesses. None of Turkey top ten exports were among the top ten growers in the world. Turkey is world export leader in ten products, but these products are not the world most growing markets, and the country should increase its relative market share in some of its ten top exports, and also consider developing organic product segments, and eliminate tobacco products in its portfolio.

Changes in the Turkish Wage Structure in the EU Accession Process

This chapter aims to analyze the evolution of Turkish wage structure following the introduction of new labor law in 2003 in the EU accession process. The authors first present a descriptive picture of the changes in wage inequality between 2003 and 2013. They then conduct an econometric analysis of the relative importance of individual, job- and workplace-related factors on wages across the wage distribution to understand what drives this outcome. It is found that wage inequality decreased from 2003 to 2007, and increased during the global economic crisis. Increased returns to college education, skilled white collar jobs as well as returns to construction sector stand out as the major factors increasing wage inequality. Though to a lesser extent, increased returns to blue-collar jobs, formal job status and reduced returns to employment in large firms are factors reducing wage inequality in Turkey in the post-2003 era.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Talent Management in Turkey

Addressing the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and talent management, we examine these fields largely from the perspective of employee attraction. We first present the historical development of CSR, detailing its current standing in Turkey. We then go on to describe how talent management has developed, and its particular relevance in emerging markets. Pulling these two fields together, we explore how a firm's CSR activities can improve employer branding to attract and retain key human resources. Comparing the results of Capital Magazine's “CSR Leaders in Turkey” and “Most Admired Companies in Turkey” research (both conducted annually from 2009 to 2013), we are able to identify how corporate reputations are related to CSR in the specific context of Turkey.

Effective Applications of Optimization Methods in the Manufacturing Environment in Turkey

In today's manufacturing environment both used equipment and worker resources have become more crucial. Both resource must be used in an effective and appropriate way. Therefore, studies in conjuction with manufacturing environment are actualized under dual resource constrained (DRC). In the extant literature, DRC manufacturing environments place importance on certain dimensions which are surveyed in detail in this study. This literature research is conducted for manufacturing environments where worker planning and product scheduling topics are studied frequently. Our observations reveal that the systems of single conducted do not reflect the real manufacturing environment; hence, hybrid manufacturing systems which consist of functional layout and cells are investigated. The efficiency of hybrid manufacturing systems in the DRC environment are revealed by searching through literature. Therefore, the more effective way of usage of optimization methods are proposed by examining the studies regarding hybrid manufacturing system in terms of usage of optimization methods.

The Impact of Turkey's Internal Economic Situation in 2000s on Its Foreign Economic Relations

Turkey is an important country both in terms of population and geographical location. In terms of population, Turkey is the second largest country in Europe after Germany. Geographically, Turkey serves as a bridge between Europe and Asia. This features enables Turkey to develop economic relations with a lot of countries and regions. However, Turkey has experienced negative results in the field of economics as in many areas because of political uncertainty and government structure based on coalition and could not make full use of its potential for many years. After living one of the worst economic crisis in history in the 2001 year, the people in Turkey has decided to a government of one party than government based on coalitions. With the political stability, Turkey became a center of attraction in direct foreign investment and portfolio investment for both countries in the region and developed countries. Despite these positive developments, the greatest difficulty encountered in the economy in this period is the current account deficit problem.