Turkey has lost the chance of success by doing everything exactly the way it has done so far. Staying the same used to be a possibility, but not anymore. That’s why Turkey has to start looking for novel ways of doing things and making a difference. Turkey has to forget everything it knows from factories to schools, politics, and science, refute everything that is enciphered in its genetic code and seek a new way. But are we ready for that adventure? Not really. Just as Turkey’s politicians are unaware that the country can be governed in a much better way, company executives are unaware that much better management is possible for their companies. Everybody has a strong belief that the status quo is the best option available. What needs to change thus remains in tact. Everyone tends to believe that the artificial balance that remains is a genuine equilibrium. And the result naturally bodes ill. I wonder if any other culture outside of Turkey has a proverb that reads, “no one admits that their product is bad.” In a country where this proverb is used, no one apologizes for their actions; the mechanism of self-criticism does not function. Everyone chants: “we are here for a dialogue, but we know we are right, anyway.” The culture of political reconciliation does not blossom. Companies fail to rejuvenate and strengthen. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Occupied with such thoughts, I first recalled a survey TEPAV carried out in Northern Cyprus a few years ago. We asked public employees, business circles, and citizens about the quality of public services. We found that people were unhappy with the quality of services and the lack of the rule of law. They believed that public agencies were unproductive and dominated by clientalism. They though they weren’t benefiting from services as much as they expected. Public employees, on the other hand, disagreed with the business world and people. There was a remarkable gap in perceptions. I remember recalling the proverb “no one admits that his/her product is bad.”

Later, I recalled the results of a World Bank survey about the quality of management across companies, carried out in 22 countries and repeated in Turkey. They also depicted a similar perception gap, right at the heart of the corporate sector. There was a significant gap between the scorecard prepared by experts about the quality of management across companies and the assessment of company executives about the quality of management in their companies. Executives believed that things in their company were just fine. Human resources management was just fine, targets were set perfectly, a keen eye was put on harmony, and all sorts of scientific techniques and assessments were utilized for management processes. They never thought of themselves as acting through inherited, hackneyed methods. Scorecards, however, revealed the opposite. No one admitted that their product was bad.

On the other hand were aspects where the perceptions were negative. The survey implemented in Singapore, for instance, revealed that executives’ perception of the quality of management was even worse than the company scorecard. Results suggested that company executives in Singapore are in a constant pursuit of perfection while their peers in Turkey have no intention to search for anything better, since they are perfectly sure that all is well. Executives in Singapore are capable of criticizing themselves, unlike their peers in Turkey, which hints at some sort of a cultural difference.

But here is what shocked me the most: The gap between individual’s perception about their management skills and reality peaked in Turkey. Among 22 countries on the list, Turkey settles for a mediocre position in relations to its GDP per capita rank. Unlike others however, Turkey had the highest rate of people who are confident that they are doing their jobs perfectly. Except Turkey and Singapore, all of the 20 countries had a relatively positive account of themselves than what the scorecards indicated. Turkey stood out to me, as in the Özdemir Asaf poem "the colors were all blotting at same haste, they gave white first place."

To be honest, this result is not surprising. But this is where the problem lies. You can’t imagine how much the recent process of political transition in Turkey resembles the process of institutionalization for family businesses. I will write about that sometime.

Do you think companies of such a country are capable of learning lessons from their domestic and foreign rivals? I don’t think so. Can they converge with each other in terms of productivity? No. Can they make larger contributions to growth? No. And finally, can we solve the issue by convincing the Central Bank to cut rates? No.

Figure 1: Perceptions about quality of management and perception gap across public employees, households, and firms (Totally agree and totally disagree, %)

Source: TEPAV, Functional-Institutional Review Study for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (2011-2012)

Figure 2. Gap between self-assessment scores of company executives and expert scores about quality of management

Source: The World Bank

This commentary was published in Dünya daily on 06.03.2015