Business group diversification strategy: Turkish business groups' orientation during 2004-2014

As an organizational form business groups are common in emerging markets. However, we do not have sufficient information on the formation and evolution of business groups. Few studies investigate the business groups degree and direction of diversification and identify their similarities and differences in the implementation of diversification strategies. The aim of this study is identifying Turkish family-owned business groups' degree and direction of diversification through 2004-2014. Varadarjan and Ramanujan's (1987) diversification matrix is used as a new method in categorizing business groups based on their diversification strategies. Results suggest that there are differen groups of business groups which follow different growth patterns. Among those, the business groups which highly diversiy into unrelated businesses and also relatedly diversify in these sector are likely to gain advantages from good, capital and labor market intermediation. Research findings also suggest that the degree of business groups diversification do not predict its direction. The direction of diversification might be an interesting research subject for researchers. Keywords: Business groups, related diversification, unrelated diversification.