"International Cooperation in Management Training: The ILO and the Turkish Management Development Centre (1968-1974)'"

This paper analyses the origins and first years of the Turkish Management Development Centre (TMDC), founded in 1968 upon an international cooperation project financed by the United Nations, the Ford Foundation and the US Agency for International Development, and the technical and execution advice of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The paper addresses the role of management training, on a broad sense, in international cooperation programs after World War II and, in particular, the role of ILO in the implementation of management training centres in developing economies.
The analysis shows that management education played a more significant role in post–World War II international cooperation programs than previously acknowledged. As recent studies on Latin America have also noted (Amdam & Lluch, 2024; Lluch & Amdam, 2024), ILO emerged as a key actor in disseminating management practices aimed at boosting productivity and fostering industrial modernization. Through its training and advisory programs, initially targeting business elites and later middle managers and technical staff, the ILO actively contributed to building local capacities in countries such as Turkey. Its work, carried out in close collaboration with national partners and other international agencies, including the Ford Foundation and U.S. official aid programs, highlights a transnational dimension of management education that intertwined economic, political, and social objectives within postwar international cooperation. Ultimately, this study calls for a reassessment of the ILO’s role and management education as instruments of cooperation and development, broadening our understanding of the institutional networks that supported the global expansion of productivity and business models during the Cold War.