Evolution of Business Organizations in the European Periphery: Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic, 1850-1950

Main Objectives: The EU-Funded EVOBUSORG project was designed to examine the historical evolution of business organizations in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Through this examination, the study aims to explore the effect of institutional heritage on the choice of organizational form and the challenges faced by latecomers in their attempts to borrow and adapt foreign legal and organizational institutions. Under this primary objective, the project aimed to achieve the following sub-objectives:

(i) To construct a database of business organizations in the main cities of the Empire, based on published and unpublished archival resources.
(ii) To investigate the relationship between legal framework and the choice of organizational form. (iii) To place the evolution of legal framework within the political economy context of the period. (iv) To explore the effect of sector-specific characteristics of the market on the choice of the organizational form.
(v) To provide a comparative evaluation of the development of business organizations in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic.