From Chaos to Systems: The Engineering Foundations of Organization Theory, 1879-1932

Shenhav, Yehouda

doi:10.2307/2393754

Cited by 128 publications

(86 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In the same vein, discourse analyses could be deployed to explore whether all participants feed from the same discursive sources or whether there is convergence from different sources. Small-group production (Cole, 1985) Accounting standards (Botzem & Quack, 2006;Perry & Noelke, 2005) Vesting Government HR practices (Scarbrough, 2002) Spread of engineering paradigm in management (Shenhav, 1995) …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How are management fashions institutionalized? The role of institutional work

2008

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We explore how transitory management fashions become institutionalized. Based on the concepts of institutional entrepreneurship and institutional work, we postulate that fashionable management practices acquire permanence when they are anchored within field-wide institutions. The building of such institutions requires various types of institutional work, including political work, technical work and cultural work. Based on a review of the empirical literature on various management fashions, we identify the actors engaging in these different types of works, and their skills. Our results suggest that the institutionalization effect is stronger if more types of institutional work are deployed and if the skill sets of the involved actors vary. We also argue that institutional construction in the case of management fashions is likely to take the form of decentralized 'partaking' rather than being led by a single dominant institutional entrepreneur. We conclude with implications for the study of management fashions and the role of agency in institutionalization.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How are management fashions institutionalized? The role of institutional work

2008

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“…Empirical studies of management innovations have found evidence in support of this hypothesis. For example, the fluctuation of reported labor union activities was positively associated with the popularity of systematic management between 1879 and 1932 (Shenhav, 1995). Similarly, Abrahamson (1997) found that recorded voluntary turnover was positively associated with the prevalence of human relations/personnel management discourse between 1875 and 1992.…”

Section: Hypothesis Developmentmentioning

confidence: 97%

Popular Concepts beyond Organizations: Exploring New Dimensions of Information Technology Innovations

Wang¹

2009

JAIS

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The abundance of innovation concepts in the world of information technology and their differentiated influence on the design, production, and use of IT in organizations make it important that we understand what shapes these concepts themselves. Taking the perspective that an IT innovation concept emerges and evolves beyond organizational boundaries in a community, I argue that the prevalence or popularity of the concept in IT discourse positively influences the adoption of the underlying innovation. Then with the aim to explore what makes an IT innovation concept popular, my empirical analysis of the once highly popular concept ERP (enterprise resource planning) suggests that (1) the popularity of ERP was influenced positively by the prevalence of highlighted business problems that ERP was claimed to solve; (2) ERP's popularity was influenced negatively by the prevalence of related innovation concepts; and (3) these influences largely disappeared after ERP passed its peak popularity. These results imply that the popularity of an IT innovation concept responds to the broader climate of business and relies on the right type of attention drawn and released by other concepts in a network of concepts. Going beyond the dominant paradigm, this paper helps broaden IT innovation research along two new dimensions: toward the innovation concept, as a complement to material innovation, and toward community-level analysis, as an extension of the traditional organizational analysis. The paper also suggests that practitioners evaluate an innovation concept's fit with the broader environment and relationship with other popular concepts, as a way to make sense of the innovation and anticipate its impact on IT practice.

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“…Facts and narrative yield only the potential for more or less plausible accounts within networks. For example, while Shenhav's (1995;Shenhav and Weitz, 2000) otherwise useful relational account of the development of Taylorism is grounded in realist notions of the primacy of facts and a metaphysical notion of history as both real yet transcending human existence, for us the liberationary potential lies in freeing human action from the burden of how we believe history while simultaneously retaining our ability to capture what is important through stories and narratives over time.…”

Section: Towards An Epistemic Phase Of the Historical Turnmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reassembling Weber to reveal the-past-as-history in management and organization studies

2013

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The purpose of this article is to unravel the link between the past and history to reveal the importance and the problems of developing a historically informed critical management studies (Booth and Rowlinson, 2006;Kieser, 1994). Drawing on Munslow (2010), we focus on the relationship between 'the past' and 'history' as 'ontologically dissonant' (p. 3) to argue for an 'epistemically skeptical,' relational approach to critical organizational history. These arguments are explored through analysis of the 'career' of Max Weber in management and organization studies (MOS).

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From Chaos to Systems: The Engineering Foundations of Organization Theory, 1879-1932

Cited by 128 publications

References 19 publications

How are management fashions institutionalized? The role of institutional work

How are management fashions institutionalized? The role of institutional work

Popular Concepts beyond Organizations: Exploring New Dimensions of Information Technology Innovations

Reassembling Weber to reveal the-past-as-history in management and organization studies

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