Diffusion of foreign management practices across Turkish business organizations: a contextualized theory

Abstract

This paper advances a contextualized theory concerning the spread of foreign management practices across Turkish business organizations. Drawing on the pertinent empirical literature, we expand acclaimed models of diffusion that typically address early-industrialized source countries and develop propositions that address late-industrializing recipients like Turkey. We argue that foreign practice diffusion across Turkish business organizations is driven by two contextual forces, namely the division between the modernizing elite and the more traditional non-elite business organizations and active engagement of the elite in importing and dissemination of foreign practices, typically those that are already well-established in the source country. This context features particular situational opportunities and constraints, most notably moral, as well as pragmatic and coginitive, legitimacy of foreign practices, that shape diffusion within Turkey. Based on these arguments we reconsider motivational and implementational claims in extant literature. Specifically, we suggest that, relative to the non-elite, the elite are more likely to be earlier adopters, boast stronger moral legitimacy concerns, and engage in high-fidelity implementation. We also predict widespread decoupling across elite and non-elite organizations, suggesting the possibility of deinstitutionalization after diffusion. As we conclude, we offer contingent generalizations to similar other contexts, which we argue are more likely to be observed in particular late-industrializing countries.

Keywords:

• Business elite
• diffusion
• late-industrializing
• legitimacy
• management practice
• Turkey

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the review editor Dr. Patel Taran and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments throughout the review process. We also thank the late Hüseyin Leblebici for his helpful comments on earlier versions of the theory developed in this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Şükrü Özen

Şükrü Özen is a Professor of Organization Theory at the Management Department, Izmir University of Economics, Izmir. His main research interests are new institutional theory, cross-national diffusion and translation of management knowledge, environmental conflicts and discursive action. His articles have appeared on the journals Organization Studies, Organization, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization & Environment, Socio-Economic Review, and Journal of Management Studies.

Çetin Önder

Çetin Önder is a Professor of Management and Organizations at the Management Department, Social Sciences University of Ankara, Ankara. He is currently interested in how institutional change shapes organizational collectivities or professional actors, focusing on the interaction between institutional mandates and local circumstances of actors. His research has been published in journals like Leadership Quarterly, Industry and Innovation, Higher Education, and Scientometrics.