The role of organic intellectuals in mediating management ideas: a case from Turkish academia

Abstract

Over the past two decades, there has been increasing interest in the history of management thought in peripheral countries. The consequent body of literature often focuses on the contestation among different Western traditions in social sciences or institutional models. In turn, it largely downplays the social context of intellectual production and the transformational actions of agents. Using the Gramscian notion of 'organic intellectual' as a point of departure, this article explores the function business education and educators perform within the context of early capitalist development in a late developing country: Turkey. By doing so, it analyses the role of the cadre of administrative and organization sciences, moving back-and-forth across the institutions of civil society and operating in various parts of the state apparatus, in socializing people into particular values and legitimating management as an academic discipline and a field of practice.