The Cultural Orientations of Entrepreneurs and Employees' Job Satisfaction: The Turkish Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (Smes) Case

The relationship between the cultural orientation ofan entrepreneur, the work environment that results from such orientation, andemployee satisfaction is studied in small- and medium-sized enterprises inMersin, Turkey. Data were collected by the Turkish State Institute ofStatistics from various production and manufacturing sectors. The sampleconsisted of 217 male entrepreneurs, and 690 male and 450 female employees.Pervasive and salient attributes of Turkish society that serve as the"common language" between an entrepreneur and his or her employees werefound to be paternalism, collectivism, individualism, power distance, anduncertainty avoidance. Results showed that the entrepreneurs studied display highly paternalisticbehaviors, such as supporting their employees' personal situations (marriage,illness, etc.). High power distance between entrepreneurs and employees andcollectivism between employees in order to minimize conflict were alsoobserved. Uncertainty avoidance levels were found to be low, most likely due tothe highly fluctuating economy of Turkey. It is concluded that improvement ofthe work environment, and hence job satisfaction, should be focused on culturalvalues shared by Turkish workers rather than importing foreign business models.(LKB)