From imposition to concession, from compliance to resistance: creating a Harvard Business School clone in a Turkish university, 1954-1965

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2025.2543956

Drawing on archival sources, this study traces the early history of the ‘Turkish Institute of Business Administration’, established in 1954 within the Faculty of Economics at Istanbul University with Ford Foundation (FF) funding and Harvard Business School (HBS) guidance. The historical narrative describes what transpired on both the American and Turkish sides during this FF-HBS-initiated and directed transfer process. Through this account, the article contributes to the literature on post-World War II American influence on business education in three ways: First, it highlights how direct American interventions were shaped by who in the United States was involved, and when. Second, it demonstrates how tensions and power relations between the FF and HBS influenced both the direction and the outcome of the transfer. Finally, the process-based account shows how and why the reception of an imposed American model involved both full adoption and some significant deviations.