The investigation of Syrian employees in Turkey in the context of social cultural values

Understanding employees' cultural values enables management to make and implement the right organizational decisions. This will help to create a healthy working environment, reduce waste of resources, and minimize mistakes. Understanding the cultural values of Syrian employees will provide the right management of the organizations with the opportunity to make appropriate managerial behavior for all employees and facilitate the adaptation process of Syrian employees to Turkish business organizations. Thus, it will contribute to how to ensure an effective social cohesion process of Syrians. In this study, the cultural value dimensions (Power distance, Individualism-Collectivism, Masculinity-Feminism, Uncertainty Avoidance and ToleranceConstraint) determined by Hofstede were examined for Syrian employees living in three cities of Turkey: Izmir, Istanbul, and Gaziantep. In addition, the demographic characteristics of the employees, such as gender, age, education level, and the place of their upbringing (rural or urban), were assessed in relation to their cultural values. The study used Hofstede's most up-to-date scale, Values Survey Module 2013. Data were collected online from a total of 356 Syrian workers in Turkey. The analyses indicate that Syrian employees in Turkey maintain high power distance and collectivist cultural values, turned from a masculine and short-term oriented society to a feminine and long-term oriented society, and have high indulgence cultural values. When the relationship between demographic characteristics and cultural values of Syrian employees is analyzed, it is found that gender and age variables have no effect on cultural values; however, the education level has an effect on individualism-collectivism and uncertainty avoidance cultural values, while the urban or rural place of upbringing factor has an effect on masculinity-femininity cultural values. Keywords: Culture, Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions, Syrian Employees in Turkey, VSM 2013.