Management fashion

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Management fads ( Engl. : Management fashions ) is called (slightly pejorative) management concepts that relatively quickly much attention from managers draw up, without its relevance is scientific proof or long practical experience.

definition

Eric Abrahamson defines a management mode as relatively transitory collective belief, disseminated by management fashion setters, that a management technique leads rational management progress . The actual change in practice is less important: According to Abrahamson, it is goods, cultural commodities , that are sold to fashion followers . According to Alfred Kieser , who dealt with management fashions as early as the 1990s, the characteristics of management fashions are:

  • Concentration on a key factor, usually a technique, the application of which is presented as inevitable and means a radical break with the previous approach
  • Mixture of simplicity and semantic ambiguity
  • Promise of quantum leaps instead of small operational steps and the emphasis on the challenge that lies in the application
  • Personification by successful and well-known personalities whose success is attributed to the application
  • Appeal to values
  • An attractive buzzword
  • An arena with several actors who share a common interest in the new topic.

enforcement

A management mode develops from a discourse that develops around a catchphrase or label such as lean production , customer relationship management , benchmarking , total quality management or business process reengineering . This discourse is fueled by different types of texts and produces new texts: manuals, articles in management magazines, workshops, communication in the context of Internet forums, etc. But socio-psychological factors and the balance of power between employees and employers also play a role in enforcement.

In order to avoid the negative connotation of the term “fashion”, which is detrimental to its spread, innovations in management practice are usually referred to as concepts. What they have in common, however, is that they have hardly ever been thoroughly empirically evaluated . The multitude of these concepts also increases the perceived environmental complexity by increasing the available options for action. By more or less consciously imitating management fashions, managers try to reduce the risks of their actions and decisions as well as the perceived environmental complexity. According to Abrahamson, this development takes place in four stages: creation of fashion (often in science), selection by the fashion designers (the consultants), communication (through the Internet, articles, conferences, etc.), diffusion (through textbooks, further training and imitation) . At some point one fashion fades and is replaced by another. According to Abrahamson, the average life cycle of such concepts was 14.8 years in the 1950s and an average of just 2.6 years in the 1990s.

function

Management fashions can take away uncertainties, provide orientation and secure legitimation by imitating certified role models. They signal innovation and progress.

As the term fashion makes clear, however, these concepts are based on transience and must therefore always be critically questioned. Management fashions put existing knowledge under pressure to change. A strategic and well-considered handling of management fashions is therefore advisable, as they not only represent a resource, but can also induce adaptation to the competition ( isomorphism ) and blind imitation.

Management fashions always take up problems that are felt to be topical and burning in practice. The persuasiveness of management fashions increases with the number of companies that have implemented the (questionable) fashions. This increases the isomorphism and can lead to lemming or bandwagon effects .

evaluation

In contrast to other management theories , the neo-institutionalist theory assumes that isomorphism will increase in the long term, because the goal of decisions is above all to legitimize internally and externally: It usually appears rational and effective to follow the masses with your decisions, even if it is a matter of rationality myths. However, with the means of neo-institutionalist theory, one can also come to the opposite conclusions, as the Harvard Business Manager boldly put it: "better copied than badly invented". The individual manager often overestimates his ability to free himself from institutional constraints.

The same also applies to fashions in information technology or its management, which are subject to much shorter fashion cycles than the cycles customary in general management.

Actors such as management consultants , professors, editors and seminar organizers play a key role in the dissemination of management concepts . According to Ernst / Kieser, the creation and dissemination of management fashions is an essential field of work in the consulting industry, through which they generate their own demand.

literature

  • Martin Dresler: management fashions. A neo-institutionalist perspective. E-book, Grin Verlag 2006.
  • B. Ernst / A. Kieser: Attempt to explain the incredible growth of the consulting market. In: R- Schmidt / H. Gergs / M. Pohlmann: Management sociology . Topics, desiderata, perspectives. Rainer Hampp Verlag. Munich and Mering 2002.
  • Michael Faust: Why is management consulting booming - and why not at all times and everywhere? In: R. Schmidt / H. Gergs / M. Pohlmann: Management Sociology . Topics, desiderata, perspectives. Rainer Hampp Verlag. Munich and Mering 2002.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ E. Abrahamson: Fashion. 1996, p. 255, cit. according to Dresler 2006, p. 7.
  2. ^ Abrahamson, p. 263.
  3. ↑ A. Kieser: Management fashions on the catwalk: The manager's new clothes. In: Beschendung aktuell , 1996, issue 1, pp. 14-17; Ders .: Rhetoric and Myth in Management Fashion. In: Organization 4 (1997) 1, pp. 49-74.
  4. ↑ Eric Abrahamson: Managerial fads and fashion: The diffusion and rejection of innovations. In: Academy of Management Review , 16 (1991), pp. 586-612.
  5. ^ Katharina Jörges-Suess, Stefan Suess: Neo-Institutionalistische Approaches der Organizationstheorie. In: Das Wirtschaftsstudium 33 (2004) 3, pp. 316–318, online: [1]
  6. ↑ What is ...? Isomorphism. In: HBM issue 8/2006.
  7. ↑ Jintae Lee, Emilio Collar: Information Technology Fashions: Building on the Theory of Management Fashions. MIT Center for Coordination Science, Working Paper 219 , June 2002.