Replicating The “Self”: The Case of Refugee Scholars in Turkish Higher Education System

The main question of “New Institutionalist Organization Theory (NIOT)” is “why are organizations so similar to each other?”. NIOT names this high similarity among organizations as “isomorphism” and endeavours to understand the mechanisms behind isomorphism. According to NIOT; in uncertain environments, some organizations may mimic other leading organizations to reduce uncertainty and gain legitimacy in the eyes of actors who bestow this legitimacy. This mechanism of legitimacy is named as “mimetic isomorphism” by scholars of NIOT. However, organizations may mimic their own past practices that they perceive as successful one. This study is based on a case that Turkish Higher Education System mimics its’ one of the past, successful practices. During the first years of the young Turkish Republic, with the rise of National Socialists in Germany, many German scholars who felt uncomfortable themselves were invited to Turkey by the government. After many decades, the Turkish government invited Ukrainian scholars to Turkey for this time who were forced by the RussiaUkraine war to leave their country. The Council of Higher Education (YÖK) of Turkey announced that 20 public research university in Turkey can employ Ukranian scholars with status of “foreign national contructual instructors”. Therefore, the Turkish Higher Education System seems to replicate its one of the past practices. According to the author of this study, the case can contribute the literature of automorphism by differentiating the reason and level of it.