MUSHROOM MANAGEMENT APPROACH

The concept of Mushroom Management has been involved in the management science in recent years and is named after the metaphor of raising mushrooms. Just as mushrooms are fertilized, left in the dark and cultivated in a short time; mushroom managers also provide the necessary business resources to employees, however, they do not share the policies, revenues of the organization and business risks with them. The objective of study is to embrace and examine the concept of mushroom management theoretically, develop an assessment instrument for determining this perception and bring the concept and the scale in the Turkish literature. The theoretical part was formed by using the limited number of studies in literature. Field study was conducted by applying a questionnaire to 200 employees at a private health institution in the province of Trabzon with the help of an 8 point Likert scale, which was developed for measuring the concept of mushroom management. The acquired data were analyzed by using the SPSS and LISREL softwares. It was determined that study participants had moderate level of mushroom management perception. 58% of employees who participated in the study stated that the management did not establish a direct communication with junior employees and share all the information about the organization. On the other hand, a Turkish scale of eight items measuring the mushroom management perception was developed within the scope of this study. Besides, as mushroom management contains total opposite applications of open, democratic, participative and transparent management applications; it is perceived as a negative approach. However, it might turn into a useful means for managers in some cases (like preventing chaos, preserving the organization's confidentiality) in practice.