The Origin of the Business Administration Graduate Studies in Turkey: An Oral History of Business Administration Courses

The aim of this study is to explore The Institute of Business Economics established at IstanbulUniversity Faculty of Economics in 1954, and Business Administration courses ran in this institute,which could be accepted as the origin of Business Administration graduate courses in Turkey. Inthis vein, lecturers, researchers, assistants, and graduate candidates of this specific program back in the 1956 were interviewed. These interviews are presented as an oral history research of that first specific example of less-economics oriented business administration education. Findings support that these business administration courses and the following outputs can be considered the earliest efforts in Turkey. Findings also reveal that these courses had direct and indirect effects on today s business environment and the business administration education in Turkey along with a number of targets that were not achieved. The study aims to shed light on the fundamentals of today s institutionalized business administration graduate programs and to explain how these programs were evolved via first hand primary data.