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This study investigates the relationship between financial participation plans, that is profit sharing, share plans and option plans, and firm financial performance using a longitudinal panel data set of non-financial listed companies for the period 1992–2009 comprising 2,216 observations. In addition, it makes a distinction between financial participation plans that are narrow based, directed to top management and executives only, and broad based, targeted to all employees. The panel data also allow us to take into account time lag effects, as profit sharing is usually said to have short-term effects while stock options and share plans are more targeted to longer term impact. Our results show that broad-based profit-sharing plans and combinations of broad-based profit sharing and share plans are positively related with many firm financial performance indicators relative to companies without these plans. However, the results consistently show negative associations between both narrow- and broad-based option plans and firm financial performance.

Improving Turkey's low level of education quality and achieving equity in quality education across its seven regions continue to be a monumental challenge. The purpose of this study was to document the extent of Turkey's regional differences in science achievement at the eighth grade and to investigate factors associated with these differences. Identifying the factors influencing Turkey's regional inequalities in student learning is crucial for establishing policies that will help raise the educational performance at the national level as well as close regional gaps. A series of hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses were performed at two levels (the school/class level and student level) using Turkey's nationally representative data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2007. Findings suggested that attempts to increase Turkish students' achievement and close the achievement gaps between regions should target the students in the undeveloped regions, particularly in Southeastern and Eastern Anatolia. Designing interventions to improve competency in Turkish and to compensate for the shortcomings of insufficient parental education, limited home educational resources, poor school climate for academic achievement, and inadequate instructional equipment and facilities might be expected to close the regional achievement gaps as well as raise the overall achievement level in Turkey. Using TIMSS data, this study provided an example of a methodology that may be employed to describe how student achievement is distributed among various subpopulations of national interest and to investigate the factors that contribute to differences in the achievement distribution.

Project business as a mode of operation is currently very prevalent on international business-to-business markets, and project-related services are an important part of most projects. However the way to market these types of services is under-researched in mainstream marketing literature. Therefore, via a multi-lingual literature review, this article scrutinizes four marketing schools for frameworks relevant to the marketing of project-related services: project, services, transaction, and interactive business-to-business marketing. The analysis shows that the project marketing concepts better capture key aspects of marketing project-related services internationally than do the mainstream service marketing concepts. However, the analysis also suggests that a pluralist approach may be useful when marketing of project-related services, as some frameworks from other marketing schools are also suitable. On this basis, suggestions for marketers of project-related services are presented, and a research agenda for academics concerning the study of project-related services both internationally and domestically is suggested.

More than ever before, public transit must compete in the transport market. This competition is, on the one hand, against steadily increasing car traffic; and on the other hand, between public transit operators. This, in turn, leads to new demands regarding the type, content and quality of data needed for planning and management. Frequently, traditional travel behaviour surveys do not provide sufficiently accurate and detailed information about public transit demand. To plan public transit, frequently a precise description of all trip stages, including the first and the last mile, is necessary. To achieve this, an adaptation of the traditional survey methods is necessary. In many countries, public transit associations have been established to integrate services offered by individual public transit operators with the help of through-ticketing and a coordination of lines and timetables into what looks, to the user, like a single system. To distribute revenue among the operators involved, detailed surveys of passengers are needed. Measuring the quality of public transit service and surveying customer satisfaction are new tasks. Such data are the basis for quality assurance and are essential for gaining and keeping customers of the public transit system. New technologies such as the Global Positioning System, automated passenger counts and Smart Card Payment Systems offer new possibilities to collect data more efficiently and cost-effectively. This article covers essential aspects of surveys and the collection of data that are crucial for the planning and management of public transit; it points to state-of-the-art methods and offers potential solutions.