In the late 1980s workforce became more diverse in terms of demographic changes, cultural differences and other characteristics of organizational members. This diversity was a reflection of changing global markets. Workforce diversity has both positive and negative effects on organizational performance. Therefore, it is becoming important especially for medium- and large-scale businesses. In order to manage increasingly workforce diversity and to prevent discrimination, diversity management is now considered as a major part of strategic human resource management. The purpose of this (...) study is to establish the dimensions of discrimination that occur due to demographic differences in Turkish manufacturing industry. The findings of the research indicate that demographic characteristics, socio-cultural structure, managerial policy and behaviors, union tendency and regional differences, laws and local community, gender, educational and age differences, and political opinions have influence on discrimination. According to the results, discrimination has been observed mostly in job processes such as promotions and appointments, human resource selection, job/employment examination and interviews, and performance appraisal. (shrink)

What accounts for the resurgence of religion in Muslim countries that pursue strict secularization policies? Theories of religious resurgence have emphasized secular differentiation, religious growth, and pietist agency as animating sources behind politically engaged religions. Extending this work, I advance a typology of strategies oppositional actors employ to produce and sustain religious politics. I ground my approach in the study of Islamic resurgence in Turkey during the twentieth century. Drawing on published primary sources, secondary historiography, and multi-sited fieldwork, the analysis (...) shows that Turkish Islamists spearheaded successful resurgence not only by capitalizing on exogenous “opportunities” that punctuated the “repressive” pathway but, more importantly, by pursuing endogenous institutional change. Even though secularizing agents restricted the religious field’s autonomy, dissidents avoided open confrontation with the state. Instead, they positioned themselves within official institutions (embedding, layering), changed their logic (conversion), and supplemented these institutions with alternative ones (substitution). As a result, religious actors turned Islam into an ideological counterattack on the regime’s secular institutions. These insights can be extended to religious mobilizations throughout the Muslim world as well as to non-religious social struggles beyond it. (shrink)

How can ethnic boundaries survive in contexts of legal racial equality and institutionalized ethnic mixing? Constructivist theories of ethnicity have long emphasized the fluidity, rather than the durability, of ethnic boundaries. But the fact that ethnic boundaries often endure—and even thrive—in putatively non-ethnic political contexts suggests the need for sustained attention to the problem of boundary persistence. Based on an ethnographic study of ethnic boundaries in the Turkish case, this article argues that the regulation of the domain of sexuality and (...) marriage can play a critical role in reproducing boundaries when political institutions neither acknowledge nor aid in the survival of ethnic diversity. Ultimately, the data provide substantial evidence that the transmission and internalization of informal rules of inter-ethnic sexual conduct are central to boundary maintenance. (shrink)

This research was carried out among 220 married women entrepreneurs in Ankara urban center to determine the interaction between the business and family lives. In this study, random sampling method has been used and women entrepreneurs have been taken to sphere of the research were interviewed. The effect of being an entrepreneur on the multiple roles (family, social, economical and individual) and the state of conflict between the entrepreneur role and other roles in family were examined. On the other hand, (...) the stress occurred from business and family life was emphasized. Research findings showed that the women thought that being entrepreneurs affect their roles in family life negatively, while positively affecting their roles in social, economical and individual life and they suffered from conflicts between the entrepreneur role and other roles in family and that the role of entrepreneur mostly conflicted with the roles of housewife, mother, and wife, respectively. It was found that the most important factors causing stress due to business and family life were insufficient demand in the market, excessive expectations of family members and physical fatigue. (shrink)

This article focuses on images of walking in Agnès Varda's films – Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), Sans toit ni loi (1985), and Les Plages d’Agnès (2008). The activity of walking (as urban flânerie, circular travelling or walking backwards) is central to these films, and can be seen as a corporeal practice that not only interweaves striated and smooth spaces but also offer a gender-sensitive, political contemplation on the forces of striation and smoothing as well as a re-invention of (...) space. The women in movement in Varda's films embody a transgression of stratified territories such as the image-oriented society of the spectacle in Cléo, myths of adolescence and settled living in Sans toit ni loi, or the boundaries of aging in Les Plages d'Agnès. (shrink)

One of the important areas where the development of Islamic calligraphy can be observed is the tombstone inscriptions. As a reflection of the evolution of calligraphy in the 18th and 19th centuries of the Ottoman Empire, tombstone inscriptions also began to contain high artistic value. Especially the epitaphs of the tombstones belonging to the noble families, state officials and the people of the palace, combined with the fine workmanship, became works of art. These examples are important records for art history (...) as they mostly contain signatures and dates. Gravestones, which are important in many aspects, especially art, literature and history, are mostly open to the public and therefore to destruction. This situation makes it necessary and meaningful to evaluate historical gravestones in a multi-faceted way and to reveal their value. Therefore, serious research on gravestones is extremely valuable. This article is about the gravestones signed by calligraphers of the cemetery belonging to the Yahya Efendi Complex in Istanbul-Beşiktaş. The study includes the analysis of the data collected before the 2009-2013 restoration, considering the current situation of the cemetery. The cemetery is home to tombstones with high artistic value due to the importance of the buried people. There are over two thousand tombstones in the cemetery, which has an important place within the social complex. Some of these stones attract attention with their decorations and stone workmanship, as well as their inscriptions, which are rare examples of calligraphy art. Among these inscriptions, seventy-nine samples signed by calligraphers were found and these samples were examined within the scope of the article. It is possible to see the prominent artists of the last period among the calligraphers whose works are found in the cemetery. Yahya Efendi Cemetery is home to the signed epitaphs of twenty-seven different calligraphers, mainly Aziz Efendi, Sâmi Efendi, Şefik Efendi, Şevki Efendi, Hulusi Efendi, İzzet Efendi, Nuri Korman, Arif Efendi and Halim Özyazıcı. (shrink)

“Sıkıcı kabul edilen ciddi iş yahut etkinliklere eğlenceli addedilen ciddiyetsiz oyun öğeleri bulaştırarak, söz konusu iş yahut etkinliklere yönelik şevki artırmaya, onlardan daha fazla verim almaya çalışmanın genel adı” olarak tarif edilebilecek olan oyunlaştırma, dâhilî oyunlaştırma, haricî oyunlaştırma, davranış değişikliği yaratmayı hedefleyen oyunlaştırma olmak üzere üçe ayırılabilir. Bunların arasında dâhilî oyunlaştırma, oyunlaştırılmış iş yerlerinde çalışanların çalışma şevk ve iş tatminini, dolayısıyla verimliliği artırmakla; haricî oyunlaştırma şirket veya kurumlar için hedef kitlenin müşteri memnuniyetini ve/veya marka sadakatini artırmakla; davranış değişikliği yaratmayı hedefleyen (...) oyunlaştırma ise özellikle eğitim ve sağlıkta kullanıcı katılımını, dolayısıyla başarıyı artırmakla övülür. Ne ki, oyunlaştırma, oyun fikriyle uyuşmadığı yahut onu tahrip ettiği; kapitalizmin beraberinde getirdiği sömürüyü artırıp yabancılaşmayı derinleştirirken sömürünün veya yabancılaşmanın bilincine varılmasını engellediği, bu bakımdan ideolojik bir aygıt olduğu; bedenin bir algoritmaya taşınmasına ve gözetime aracılık ederek kontrolü kolaylaştırdığı, kısaca biyopolitik bir araç olduğu gerekçeleriyle eleştirilir. Oyunlaştırmaya Kant etiği açısından bakmak da dikkate değer sonuçlar ortaya koyabilir. Nitekim Kant için bir eylemi ahlâkî yahut iyi yapan, ilgili davranışın olumlu sonuçlarından ziyade, iyi niyettir ve iyi niyet de yalnızca ödeve uygun olmakla kalmayan, aynı zamanda ödevden dolayı yapılanda bulunur. Oyunlaştırma ise, her ne kadar kişileri ödeve uygun eylemeye yaklaştırsa da ödev dışı bir teşvik mekanizması olarak, onları ödevden dolayı eylemekten, yani ahlâki olandan, basitçe iyiden uzaklaştırır. (shrink)