Academics' Opinions on Organizational Democracy and the Perception of Academic Freedom and the Appropriate Level in Turkey

The study aimed to determine how lecturers have adopted organizational democracy and academic freedom in Turkish state universities, as well as to find out their views on its appropriation for Turkey. A correlative descriptive survey model is used in this study. The study sample was included 418 academics working at state universities in Ankara. For this research, an ‘Organizational Democracy Scale’ and an ‘Academic Freedom Scale’ were developed and employed by the researcher, and the obtained data were analyzed using SPSS statistical software. The arithmetic mean and the standard deviation were calculated for the answers provided by the academics. Regression analysis was conducted to find out the effect of organizational democracy on academic freedom. In the qualitative phase of the study, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 20 academics. NVivo 10 software was used to analyze the content of the interviews. At the end of the study, it was found that university administrations should avoid discriminative attitudes; should account for their decisions and implementations; deans and faculty boards should be elected democratically; all stakeholders (apart from academics), including students, should take part in both elections and be involved in management processes; and finally, the election system should be more democratic.