The case of organizations in Turkey from the perspective of knowledge economy

Knowledge economy is defined as an economic structure depends directly on production, distrubition and use of knowledge. This economic model has emerged as a new version of developed economy in the final stage of transformation process prevailing since 1950?s. Knowledge economies in which knowledge is the basic production factor and source of competitive advantage, are the subject matter of macro and micro analysis. Against the general trend towards the macro studies, this study focus on the characteristics of knowledge economy at micro level. The center of this study is to shed lignt on organizations in terms of parametres of knowedge economy in private sector, which compose major proportion of national economies since 1980?s.This study, aiming to query to what extent organizations in Turkey are knowledge-based, depends on a comparative analysis. In this context the organizations in the UK are held as a control group for organizations in Turkey, and top 500 organizations in terms of owning most total assets in London and İstanbul are compared to the parameters of knowledge economy. The study found out that organizations in Turkey are capable to compete with organization in top knowledge economies in terms of awareness on strategic importance of knowledge and practices on managerial dimension of knowledge management. However, it is concluded that organizations in Turkey are behind organizations in the UK in terms of innovation performance and knowledge infrustructure that it is defined as knowledge hardware in the study.