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With the popularity of electronic commerce, many organizations are facing unprecedented security challenges. Security techniques and management tools have caught a lot of attention from both academia and practitioners. However, there is lacking a theoretical framework for information security management. This paper attempts to integrate security policy theory, risk management theory, control and auditing theory, management system theory and contingency theory in order to build a comprehensive theory of information security management (ISM). This paper suggests that an integrated system theory is useful for understanding information security management, explaining information security management strategies, and predicting management outcomes. This theory may lay a solid theoretical foundation for further empirical research and application.

Fayol's theories were the original foundation for management as a discipline and as a profession. Also Fayol was the first to advocate management education. Yet he has critics who revile him (or at least disparage his work) as well as followers who respect and revere him. This paper intends to enlighten today's practitioners and academicians about the relevance and value of Fayol's theories today.

The paper addresses Fayol's contributions as well as the disparagement and the reverence. It compares Fayol's work with that of Follett, Mintzberg, Taylor, and Porter. In addition, it demonstrates the original and current interpretation and application of his theories. Finally, it indicates the alignment of Fayol's theories with strategic leadership and management.

Fayol's theories are valuable and relevant for organizational leaders because Fayol was a practitioner who documented theories that worked best for him and his co‐workers. While there are those who criticize Fayol's theories, there are many others who respect them and find them useful as academicians and as practitioners. The theory of management functions aligns well with strategic leadership and management models and theories.

The paper is the first to integrate Fayol's theories with a strategic leadership model.

This paper aims to help scholars to know the frontiers in the strategic management field. On studying, it was noted that business strategic management originated from America in the 1960s and has experienced more than half a century. However, strategic management development lacks systematical summary in the twenty-first century. The scientometric method was appliedto find out the frontiers and progress of the research of strategic management in the twenty-first century, based on the literature from 2001 to 2012 in the Strategic Management Journal.

In the paper, the authors mainly used the scientometric method and applied keywords, co-occurrence method combined with multistatistical methods and mutation words analysis, author co-citation, literature co-citation and keywords co-occurrence (national).

The findings show that the strategic management research focuses on the following theories and academic thoughts: knowledge-based view, network organization research and dynamic capability are the mainstream; besides, strategy risk, the stakeholders analysis of strategy management, corporate reputation and strategic concept also attract the attention of researchers; Barney, Teece and Porter have made significant contributions to strategy management research since the twenty-first century.

The findings in the paper will help scholars in the field of strategic management to know the main frontiers of the theory, as well as the main contributors.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Although supply chain scholars have acknowledged the fundamental disruptive changes experienced by today’s supply chains and the ensuing novelty of the research problems worthy of investigation, they have primarily relied on a limited number of theories to help explain the phenomena of interest. The purpose of this paper is to use a systematic literature review to address this gap and propose additional theories that supply chain researchers can use to help address novel supply chain phenomena, such as those caused by technological disruptions.

The authors use a systematic literature review to examine the studies published over the last 10 years in six of the top supply chain management journals (411 articles) and six of the top marketing and management journals (1,214 articles).

First, the findings show that 15 theories have been relied upon by over 95 per cent of the studies within supply chain management that use formal theories. Second, the authors identify the most frequently used theories within marketing and management (217 theories). Third, as space limitations make it impossible to offer a rich description of each of the 217 theories, the authors identify 30 theories that they considered to be the most salient to supply chain research and suggest areas where supply chain scholars can apply these theoretical lenses.

The research effort allowed the authors to map the current use of theories within the field to gain a better understanding of what other theories could augment the body of theories used within supply chain management. Thus, the current study is a “one stop shop” that supply chain scholars can consult when in a quandary about what theoretical lens to utilize.

Presents and criticizes the existing management literature. Shows that there exist unsolved problems and paradoxes in the existing functionalistic management theories. Contrasts the contingency and situational theories with a constructivistic alternative theory, and shows how the unsolved problems and paradoxes are solved, or become parts of the alternative constructivistic management theory. Argues that how these problems and paradoxes are solved is the foundation for an alternative management theory. Points out that the alternative management theory is to be empirically based. Empirical data is, therefore, essential in order to develop the alternative theory in more detail and make it more nuanced and sophisticated. Suggests that the two levels of the empirical phenomenological approach is applied and adjusted to collect and interpret the data, consisting foremost of unstructured in‐depth interviews with managers.

This paper analyses the origin, conceptual underpinnings and consequences of the idea of management theory. It argues that despite claims to incommensurability and except for critical studies authors, management researchers come together in their quest for performativity. The search for theory has condemned management scholars to espouse structural-functional-positivist assumptions. As such, mainstream management theorists assume and promote psychological determinism. Equivocations, ambiguities, tautologies and imprecise language obscure this implication, however, hollowing out management theory of its performative quality. A century after its inception, the quest for management theory has failed. Another avenue for management scholarship exists, one in which management history is a major contributor.

This paper offers a historical and conceptual analysis, relying on relevant philosophy of science scholarship. The object of study is the concept of management theory.

Most commentators on management theory rely on a widespread view (of postmodern lineage) according to which incommensurable management research paradigms exist. Allowance made for critical management studies, this paper argues otherwise, namely, that current management research paradigms are merely variations on a positivist theme. It further contends that mainstream management research has failed in its quest to identify theory, even if the language used to report research findings obfuscates this fact.

A notable implication of this paper is that management academics should reconsider what they do and in particular abandon their quest for theory in favour of management history.

This paper builds on arguments that philosophers of science and scholars specialising in sociological analysis have long recognised to offer a new thesis on management theory in particular and management academia in general.

To the extent that management accounting is based on neo‐classical economics, all decision‐making is assumed to be rational, aimed at utility or profit maximisation and all circumstances influencing decisions are accepted as stationary. The approach excludes all social, cultural or historical considerations and is based on perfect information that is freely available. Neo‐classical economics further assumes that minimum government intervention, which is regulated by competition, will result in maximum benefit for society as a whole. This paper aims to determine the extent to which management accounting theory has been based on these limiting assumptions and finds that emerging management accounting theory is increasingly based on alternative, more liberating foundations. This situation is in contrast to management accounting education in South Africa, which remains almost entirely based on neo‐classical economics.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about the existence and nature of a “gap” between theory and practice in management.

The putative theory/practice “gap” in management is investigated by examining the theory/practice debate in three cognate fields–economics, nursing and marketing.

The relationship between theory and practice is actively debated in all three of the fields. In economics, criticism has been directed at the implicit ontological assumptions made in formal mathematical methods employed by orthodox neoclassical economists. In nursing the debate has centred on the practical issues associated with implementing evidence based practice; in particular identifying and seeking to overcome barriers to implementation. In marketing, managers find most academic theory difficult to read and irrelevant; this may be because the goals of academics and the goals of practitioners are different.

Potentially fruitful topics for further research are identified at the pragmatic, epistemological and ontological levels.

The paper identifies lessons for the field of management research from economics, nursing and marketing. Each of these three areas provides a unique lens through which to view the research/practice “gap” in management.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.