Uniformity and Diversity in Turkish Business Groups: Effects of Scale and Time of Founding

This study aims to extend recent theoretical and empirical work that has begun to question the strong homogeneity argument in much of the macro‐institutional literature on nationally dominant forms of organizing. More specifically, the paper develops the proposition that intra‐national variety is likely to be greater in business strategies and structures than in governance patterns. Drawing upon macro‐institutionalist and contingency theories, testable hypotheses are derived from this proposition that postulate relationships between size and time of founding and organizational dimensions of strategy, administrative structure, and forms of governance. These hypotheses are then tested on a sample of business groups that have historically been the dominant form of large business organization in Turkey. Findings did show, as expected, that governance structures remained insensitive to size and time of founding effects. Variety associated with size was apparent in the case of central administrative structures, although features associated with vertical control remained invariant. Hypotheses concerning diversification and internationalization strategies received only partial, and in the latter case, rather weak support. The findings are indicative, however, of divergence resulting from differences in size and institutional conditions of founding.