Exporting managerial knowledge to the outpost: penetration of 'human relations' into Turkish academia, 1950-1965

Abstract

The article examines the post-war diffusion of human relations within Turkish academia. It focuses on the reception of human relations as ideology and its penetration into curricular structures within higher education. The empirical part is based on a content analysis of 23 public presentations and the examination of the curricula of educational institutions at the time. The study suggests that the processes and outcomes varied with respect to ideological absorption and the carving of structural spaces. The former was fast-paced, wholesale among adherents and closely followed the evolution in the United States, whereas the latter met with resistance and was a slower and constrained process that generated variant outcomes across educational institutions.