Preaching, teaching and researching at the periphery: academic management literature in Turkey, 1970-1999

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0170840609337952

Internationally accessible academic literature in management has been dominated very largely by contributions originating from the United States (US). Although this state of imbalance has attracted some discussion, little systematic research exists on why a large majority of countries have limited presence in international scholarly outlets. To this end, we investigated the development of the management literature in Turkey over the last three decades, as a prototypical example of a country located at the periphery of management scholarship. Our study involved a content analysis of the management articles published in local and international academic journals authored by scholars affiliated with a Turkish university. Cluster analytic results indicated that scholarly activity in this peripheral context comprised a majority fraction producing practice-oriented, non-empirical output based on literature imported from primarily the US and a minority group adhering to an imported scientific model, involving only marginally greater attention to contextualization and a limited concern with informing practice. Further analysis indicated that the organizational heritage of the university in which scholarly activity was carried out was highly significant. Scholars working in American-modeled public and private universities were more likely to base their work on the scientific model imported wholesale from the US. The post-1980 change in the institutional regime geared towards bringing Turkish higher education closer to American models and driving international publications, however, did not appear to have altered the overall panorama of scholarly practice in management, at least over a period of 15 years.