Çetin Önder

Examination of developmental models of occupational burnout using burnout profiles of nurses

AIM This paper is a report of a study to identify the occupational burnout profiles of a sample of nurses in Turkey and to examine alternative developmental models of burnout based on these profiles. BACKGROUND Previous findings on causal links between components of occupational burnout have largely been inconclusive. There are divergent models of inter-temporal ordering of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment, which are the three dimensions of burnout. METHOD Data were collected with 248 nurses from five hospitals in Turkey in 2007. The Maslach Burnout Inventory was used to collect burnout data and the Job Descriptive Index was used to measure satisfaction with coworkers and supervisors. Following validity and reliability analyses of these instruments, burnout profiles were identified using cluster analysis and the resulting profiles were validated using analysis of variance. RESULTS Three burnout profiles were identified and validated. Findings suggest a coupling of emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. That is, nurses who reported higher levels of emotional exhaustion also reported higher levels of depersonalization. Examination of the profiles suggested a non-linear relationship between personal accomplishment and emotional exhaustion or depersonalization. More specifically, nurses with higher emotional exhaustion or depersonalization did not always report lower personal accomplishment. CONCLUSION Partial support for the developmental model that endorses temporal precedence of emotional exhaustion was found. The model that emphasizes temporal precedence of depersonalization was not supported. Depersonalization was found to be a dysfunctional coping strategy with respect to emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion rather than depersonalization or perceptions of personal accomplishment should be screened for early detection and prevention of burnout.

Institutional change and scientific research: A preliminary bibliometric analysis of institutional influences on Turkey’s recent social science publications

This paper provides a detailed assessment of recent indexed journal publications by Turkish social scientists. We first present information on SCI, SSCI and AHCI indexed journal articles that were published by Turkish researchers over the past three decades. An inspection of publication statistics indicates a considerable improvement, especially during the last five years of the 1973–2005 period that we examine, in Turkey’s publication record in terms of number of articles authored or co-authored by Turkish researchers. In the next step, we scrutinize institutional sources of this improvement, emphasizing regulatory and organizational changes that have both forced researchers to publish in indexed journals and remunerated those who did so. Finally, we provide a qualitative assessment of recent improvement in publication performance of Turkish researchers by focusing on a particular behavioral consequence of institutional changes and its implications for impact that research from Turkey has on global research activity. Bibliometric analysis of articles published by Turkish researchers in SSCI-indexed journals during 2000–2005 shows that recent regulatory and organizational changes seem to have instituted a particular publication habit, publishing in journals with lower impact factor, which was earlier observed in other parts of the world where publication counts were used for performance evaluation, and that signs of improvement in our select indicators of impact are yet to be observed.

The Conditional Impact of Competence Trust on Inter-Firm Learning in a Collectivist SME Context

This study investigates the interactive influence of competence and goodwill trust on inter-firm learning. The study examines whether goodwill trust moderates the relationship between competence trust and inter-firm learning. Although earlier research points to an additive effect of competence and goodwill trust on inter-firm learning, this study hypothesizes an interactive effect of the two trust types. The studys basic premise is that, in collectivist contexts characterized with a weak legal system, goodwill trust determines the efficacy of competence trust. Empirical tests of this hypothesis involve data collected from 158 small-scale manufacturers of furniture located in Turkey. Initial empirical analysis shows that whereas goodwill trust has a positive main effect on inter-firm learning, competence trust does not. Introducing an interaction term reveals that competence trust positively influences inter-firm learning only when goodwill trust is high. Additionally, cluster analysis indicates that inter-firm learning is lowest when both competence trust and goodwill trust are low and highest when both forms of trust are high.