Does Sector Make a Difference in HRM Practices? Turkish Companies in Marmara Region

Does Sector Make a Difference in HRM Practices? Turkish Companies in Marmara Region

YILDIZ, Gültekin
BAYRAKTAROĞLU, Serkan
ÖZDEMİR, Yasemin
BALABAN, Özlem

HRM discipline, occurring in 1920’s in the USA, has been predominant in the USA and the European countries and there has been evolving phases throughout the 20th century (Storey, 1989). It has been observed that the activities, objectives, dimensions, and importance of the human resource function have changed dramatically since the 1970s (Lundy, 1994). This is a result of social, political, economical, legal and technological developments and the changes of work life, organisational features, labour. HRM functions and practices are also affected by many other factors like national and organisational circumstances (Andersen, 2000), sector, market type (Beer et al., 1984). In Turkey, there is similar development. The Turkish HRM literature has a paralel rhetoric especially to USA and Europe but the reality HR practices are not at the level that is told in the literature (Ercek, 2006). The reality is different as a result of internal and external factors effect to organisational structure and so to HRM functions. These factors are organisational features, interpersonal relations, job’s features and personal characteristics are the internal factors and external labour, external resources, rivals and regulators are the external factors (Kaynak et al., 2000; Bingol, 2006; Sabuncuoglu, 2000), the current situation of the market in which the company operates (Uyargil and Ozcelik, 2001). Also in Turkey organisational structure (Ercek, 2006) and the number of employees (Çakmak et al., 2007) in other words organisational size affect the HR practices and causes differentiation. Organisational size is also one of the factors that determine the efficiency of HR practices (Aycan, 2001; Ozcelik and Aydinli, 2006; Tanova and Nadiri, 2005). The circumstances of the HR practices in Turkey must be investigated more (Ercek, 2006). This paper starts from this point and will investigate if sector is an important factor that affect HRM practices. This paper critically explores if sector makes a difference in HRM practices and according to this aim the research will be based on questionnaires conducted within companies of manufacturing and service sectors who have HR departments in Marmara Region of Turkey. The data gained from the questionnaires are analyzed statistically using SPSS 17.00.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2009-06

149