Abstract:

This paper examines the forms of discursive work during the dissemination of a management idea in Turkey from the perspective of organizational institutionalism. The idea of financial literacy is defined as the ability to make sound and rational financial decisions to improve one’s own financial well-being. Especially in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2008, the international organizations have promoted financial literacy for its potential to enhance household wealth, financial stability, and national growth. In Turkey, the efforts to promote financial literacy have been taken on primarily as a corporate social responsibility activity by the financial corporations, their associations, non-profit organizations, and by the social enterprises. The paper aims to contribute to the debate with the aid of institutional work literature, focusing on how actors construct meaning in selectively attending to societal discourses in the context of institutional transformations. In this vein, the institutional work studies propose a framework that emphasizes the need for focusing on agential practices in analyses of institutional processes. This paper draws insight from the institutional work to understand the actors’ purposive practices in engaging in discursive work around an issue. The analysis delineates four discursive works employed during the social constitution of meaning in the corporate sustainability practices of the financial field in Turkey. These interrelated discursive works consist of neutralizing transformations, constituting subjects, constructing technologies of governance, and creating chain of equivalence around the common good.

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