Article

Critical Codes of Managerial Ethics in Turkish Culture: Readings on Kutadgu Bilig

Abstract

The acceptability of the behaviors exhibited in the administrative sense depends on the social value judgments. Value judgments, in a sense, express cultural ethical codes. What behavior is meaningful when, how and why? The answers to the question reveal the ethical codes of a society in the cultural context. In this research, it is aimed to draw a conceptual portrait on the ethics value judgments related to the management phenomenon in Turkish culture. For this purpose, the Kutagu Bilig work of Yusuf Has Hacib, which is the first policy book of the Turks, has been examined and the author’s perspective and thoughts on ethical and unethical behaviors in the administrative sense have been tried to be described. Qualitative data analysis techniques were used to obtain the findings. In this context, 11 ethical behaviors and 9 unethical behaviors in managerial sense were determined by adhering to Yusuf Has Hacib’s use of concepts about management and the methodological features of the work. Although the findings have both exploratory and confirmatory qualities, it has been seen that the majority of the themes offer a very different perspective in terms of content, although there are names similar to the concepts in the existing literature. Therefore, it can be argued that the study provides complementary and enriching contributions to the literature.z

Keywords

Kutadgu Bilig Yusuf Has Hacib Turkish culture managerial ethics codes of ethics