Prof. REFİKA BAKOĞLU

Biography

A strategy, sustainability and management expert, Prof. Refika BAKOĞLU is the tenured member of Marmara University Faculty of Business as the Founder and Director of ICS International Sustainability Research and Application Centre and the Head of the Sustainable Growth and Quality Management Master Programme. In 2000-2001, she had a post-doc at Boğaziçi University on qualitative and quantitative research methods. In 2017, she started her second PhD in Expressive Arts at the European Graduate School in Switzerland.

She has delivered undergraduate and graduate courses in State Universities (Marmara and Istanbul Technical Uni.), Foundation Universities (Maltepe, Okan and Bahçeşehir Uni.) and universities abroad (Kedge Business School, Marseille/France) throughout her academic career. For the last 10 years, she has worked on new techniques aiming at improving strategic leadership skills and strategic thinking. She has introduced the courses called Business Games at Master level, and Corporate Sustainability Management and Strategic Paradoxes and Schools of Thought at PhD level to academia. She principally uses alternative training techniques based on experimental and experiential learning in her courses and private trainings. 

She developed the practice-oriented (games, creative drama as a learning by experience method, expressive art techniques) course named “Business Games” at Faculty of Business in 2006 for the first time in Turkey as far as is known. This makes her the first and one of the few professors that uses expressive arts in theoretical and academic courses in Business education in Turkey. She has increased the use of expressive arts in her courses such as Corporate Sustainability Management (Marmara University Sustainable Growth and Quality Master's Programme), Strategic Management (Bachelor's and Master's Degree) and International Business Administration (Kedge Business School) since the fall semester of 2017-2018. 

In addition to her many national and international publications, Bakoğlu is the first academician to publish the first oral business history study in Turkey called “Business Traditions and Growth Mechanisms of Goldsmiths in the Grand Bazaar from Past until Now: An Oral History Study” in 2004 at the Family Management Congress. Besides, she organised “The Most Creative Sustainable Enterprise Competition” in 2013 as her individual social responsibility work. 

She had the chance to apply and test her own "Contemporary Strategic Management Model and Approach” in a large, complex and bureaucratic structure for the first time when she was the coordinator of the 2017-2021 Strategic Plan of Marmara University in which Marmara University’s definition of strategy, strategy development approach and processes were constituted. This plan was evaluated by the European University Association (EUA) Commission as an “an excellent framework of actions for the development of the university” and the Commission clearly stated they were impressed with that participative and comprehensive work including the accompanying strategic goals and targets for implementation  (source: https://www.iep-qaa.org/downloads/publications/marmara %20final%20follow-up%20 report %20may17.pdf).  

She acted as an academic consultant, conductor and organiser in many national and international projects, congresses, conferences and workshops. She recently organized two International Sustainability Congresses and a national Business History Conference. The 2nd International Sustainability Congress, with its opening and closing with expressive arts made her mark the different scientific congress. Bakoğlu, offering training and consultancy services to national and international companies, trade unions, non-governmental organizations and non-profit organizations outside the University to share her competences and has a daughter.