Reconciling conflicting predictions about transience and persistence of management concepts in management fashion theory and new institutionalism

Abstract

Purpose Although drawing from neoinstitutional theoretical apparatus and ontology, management fashion theory is understood as a theory that explains the transitory nature of popular ideas and practices while institutional theory explains their stabilization, persistence and further institutionalization. In a nutshell, it seems that being opposed to each other, these two theories describe and predict different, incommensurable diffusion trajectories and organizational behaviour patterns. The purpose of this paper is to unify these two competing perspectives. Design/methodology/approach This paper makes an attempt toward further unification of management fashion theory with new institutionalism by offering an alternative understanding and conceptualization of institutional change and deinstitutionalization and by distinguishing emerging concepts from already popular fashions. Findings Most emerging concepts never achieve popularity and disappear while few of them achieve massive media attention and diffuse widely becoming new management fashions. Once these concepts have achieved a wide popularity institutional forces would favor them and lead to further institutionalization. Institutional change is understood not as a deinstitutionalization of existing management fashion in terms of erosion, discontinuity or disappearance but as a decline in its media coverage while media attention focuses on new fashionable concept. The former management fashion gets institutionalized, institutional change occurs in terms of shifting attention toward new fashion and diffusion and institutionalization cycle restarts. Institutional prediction of isomorphism and institutionalization as irreversible tendencies thus can be unified with MF prediction about the bell-shaped curves in fashions’ popularity. Therefore, postulates and predictions of management fashion theory can be derived from new institutionalism and vice versa. Practical implications The paper aims to cover, generalize and explain different trajectories of various management and organizational concepts, deducing theoretical propositions from both institutional theory and management fashion theory. Theoretical and methodological ideas offered in this paper can be helpful in future research on management fashions and diffusion. Studies on the evolution of management concept can benefit from proposed categorization and causal relationships between different stages of the life cycle. Originality/value Unifying seemingly conflicting and disparate perspectives and views allows making organization theory more coherent in terms of both explanatory power and ontological commensurability. Following other mature sciences, we share the same notion of progress, namely, the aim of achieving unification and demonstrating that different organizational theories still describe the same reality.

Institutional inertia and practice variation

“…Abandoning. Some organizational theorists have been already asking about the lasting effects of adoption (Oliver, 1992;Abrahamson, 1996;Zeitz et al, 1999;Benders and Van Veen, 2001;Green, 2004;Aksom, 2020Aksom, , 2021. Management fashion theory explicitly states that the rise and fall of popular management concepts constitute a core mechanism of institutional dynamics and an important vehicle for the diffusion, circulation and transition of ideas and practices (Abrahamson, 1996;Benders and Van Veen, 2001).…”

Deinstitutionalization revisited

“…Instead, most organizational innovations emerge and disappear, giving way to new innovations (Zucker, 1989;Green, 2004;Abrahamson, 1996;Benders an van Veen, 2001;Aksom, 2021).…”

“…How the concept of decoupling can be reconciled with deinstitutionalization given that according to institutional theory rational myths from the very beginning are inconsistent with ongoing activities and internal functional needs are decoupled from adopted practice? And at the same time, how then the fact can be explained that many once-successful practices nevertheless fade away and disappear, being replaced by newer solutions (Abrahamson and Fairchild, 1999;Green, 2004;Strang et al, 2014;Dacin et al, 2010;Aksom, 2021;Raynard et al, 2021)? We offer answers to these and related theoretical questions and reconcile them into the same coherent, noncontradicting framework as different refinements of a single institutional theory formulated in Meyer and Rowan (1977) and DiMaggio and Powell (1983).…”

What’s not to like about evidence-based management: a hyper-rational fad?

“…Or if surviving, but less than a paradigm shift, might the idea become institutionalized, integrated into managerial thinking? (Aksom, 2021). Evidence-based management calls for a new way to see management.…”

“…At least, as le Bon wrote in “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” scholars know that there is a lot of “follow what others do” in human behavior (le Bon, 1960 [1895]). A number of management writers describe business fad adoption using the colloquial term “bandwagon effect” (Aksom, 2021). The term mania is also used sometimes, roughly synonymous but often carrying a slightly negative connotation.…”