Translation and import process of the shopping center (mall) form: The case study of Turkey

Some of the studies carried out in the field of organization theory deal with the journeys of management ideas in different places and the way they are applied. Institutional theory expresses this process with the concept of "diffusion" and emphasizes the similarities in practices. Scandinavian institutionalism, which takes its source from institutional theory, explains this process with the concept of "translation" and draws attention to different applications of management ideas. The aim of this study is to analyze how shopping mall which is a management idea changed during its transfer and spread to Turkey and also to analyze the factors that were effective in this process. In addition, the examination of an organizational form as a management idea is a relatively new approach. The study is based on a comprehensive literature review and a qualitative research. The research design is a case analysis and the main data collection tool is semi-structured interviews. For the research part, interviews were held with 23 people, including the general managers of 21 shopping malls operating in Turkey and 2 leading executives of the sector. According to the findings, In Turkey, four generations of shopping malls have been formed in the historical process. In addition, it was observed that diffusion was influential in the first years of establishment of shopping malls in Turkey (early 1990s) and from the first half of the 2000s until 2015, translation was influential in other time intervals. It has been concluded that factors such as flexibility of the idea, environment, management, level of knowledge and rivalry among existing competitors are influential in the prominence of diffusion or translation. Besides, it has been determined that there is a diffusion in every translation and a translation in every diffusion. Most of the participants stated that shopping malls have standard features and they have a direct impact on the social institutions and the cultures of the countries. Finally, by expanding the scope of the concept of translation, the study puts forward the concepts of individual translation and social translation as well as interpersonal translation.