Information and Communication Technologies and Organizational Culture in the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Year 2015, Volume: 20 Issue: 3, 37 - 72, 01.01.2015

Bilgin Özkan

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide an insider’s perspective on the mutually constitutive interplay between Information and Communication Technologies ICTs and the organizational culture of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the last two decades. It is argued that the introduction of ICTs to work processes in the Ministry has been a set of reform attempts of senior bureaucrats to adapt the organization to the rapidly changing socio-political environment and to ensure the dominance of the Ministry in the information field of Turkish foreign policy. Reforms have targeted organizational behaviours manifesting the basic assumptions of the organizational culture, namely “hierarchy”, “secrecy”, “oneway communication with the public” and “the notion of the survival of the state”. This case study indicates that the influence of ICTs is most profound in the communication style of foreign service officials, which has gradually been changing from one-way to two-way communication with the public. ICTs have also enabled foreign service officials to develop collaborative cross-agency relations with other public and private organizations. The article

Keywords

Turkey, Foreign Ministry, organizational culture, technology, communication, public diplomacy.

References

• The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The author thanks Dr. Manabrata Guha, Mr. Denis Cunningham, and Mr. Haldun Koç for their thorough review of the earlier drafts of this article.
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