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This paper aims to investigate the transience of management fads in the academic and the practitioner-oriented communities to shed light on their roles in the diffusion of fads.

This study traces the lifecycles of the following fads in practitioner-oriented and academic journals over more than 50 years: balanced scorecard, business process reengineering, design thinking, knowledge management, learning organization, management by objectives (MBO), matrix organization and total quality management (TQM).

Contrary to the academic–practitioner gap lamented in the literature, this study indicates no such gap regarding these fads in general, but finds differences in the intensity with which the fads are dealt with. The two communities stimulate, sustain and abandon fads collectively, as the lifecycles of most of the fads were found to mirror each other in both communities. This provides evidence of a contemporary form of popularization with a dynamic exchange of knowledge between academic and practitioner-oriented journals, rather than the traditional one-way transfer of knowledge from academia to practice.

This paper is the first to study multiple fads simultaneously in academic and practitioner-oriented journals in a historical comparison to investigate their roles in the diffusion of fads.

This conceptual paper concerns management fashions and fads. It focuses on the way that concepts, techniques and ideas become popular in the marketplace and the role of knowledge entrepreneurs and disseminators in this process. Utilising memetics – the study of memes – the paper demonstrates how some concepts, techniques and ideas prosper in the marketplace, not because of their economic reproductive capacity, but instead because of their interpersonal reproductive capacity. Knowledge entrepreneurs and disseminators (gurus and consultants) might in this light be cast as “evil Svengalis”, bringing forth contagious concepts that serve nobody except themselves. In other words, managers are somehow preyed upon, duped and tricked by gurus and consultants unleashing the latest designer mind management virus. A closer look at the institutional context into which concepts, techniques and ideas are forwarded, as well as the selection process for them, suggests however a more complex relationship exists between managers and consultants. Indeed, in this relationship, managers are likely to play an important part in the consumption of fashions and fads.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that adoption of new ideas is a more involved cognitive process than has been recognised and this paper seeks to redress the trivialisation of ideas as emerging management ideas (“fads”). The embracing of “fads” for performance improvement and competitive advantage has received considerable attention in the academic literature, resulting in a rather one-sided view.

Cognitive decision-making, evidence-based management and complexity theory are examined to illustrate cognitive process, skills and experiences used when making decisions and several propositions are derived from these ideas.

An conceptual model of “fad” adoption, integrating the ideas and propositions is presented. This model provides a more pragmatic examination of “fad” adoption decisions and encourages an in depth consideration of their introduction. The model offers a more sophisticated, focused tool for examining the adoption of new management ideas and provides a springboard from which more detailed, integrated models can be developed, and hopefully will stimulate discussion. Implications for theory and practice are also considered.

Examination of the literature on management “fads” revealed significant material that focused on the negative aspects of “fad” adoption, but an absence of material that examined how manager’s made their adoption decisions. This paper, therefore, provides a valuable contribution to both theory and practice by examining factors which contribute to how and why management decisions to adopt “fads” are made and develops a model to illustrate how these are integrated to contribute to the process of decision-making.

The purpose of the paper is to examine how organisational experimenting with total quality management (TQM) and the balanced scorecard affects the bundling of design characteristics associated with these innovations in a Swedish central government agency.

The paper adopts an exploratory, longitudinal case study approach which builds on and extends the management fad and fashion literature.

While both innovations encountered considerable implementation problems, they continued to exercise a lingering influence on the “new” performance management system emerging in the focal organisation. The original adoption of the two innovations can be explained from a traditional management fashion perspective. However, the subsequent development of performance management features a more complex mix of explanatory factors and highlights how the bundling phenomenon is entangled with managerial learning processes. This resulted in a less linear trajectory of change than that predicted by prior research on the notion of bundling.

The paper contributes to the literature on management fads and fashions by refining its conception of the role of managers of adopting organisations and organisational adoption, implementation and rejection of innovations.

The paper constitutes a first attempt to examine in greater detail how organisational experimenting with contemporary management control innovations affects the process of bundling in an individual organisation.

In this chapter, we apply diffusion of innovation theory and the theory of management fashion to examine the diffusion trajectory of human resource (HR) analytics in a U.S. context. We focus on the role mass media plays in influencing the diffusion process and address two research questions. First, does the mass media on HR analytics make observable the positive outcomes of HR analytics and is this related to increasing HR analytics adoption over time? Second, does the mass media on HR analytics show evidence of management trendsetting rhetoric?

We analyze published popular trade, business press, and peer-reviewed academic articles over a decade using a big data discourse analytical technique, natural language processing.

We find preliminary evidence that suggests that although the media has broadcasted positive outcomes of HR analytics, adoption has tailed off. In concert with the tailing off of HR analytic adoptions, the media appears to be recasting HR analytics as solving newer problems such as managing talent. Whether this shift makes a difference has yet to be determined.

Business press appears to influence the adoption process, both by broadcasting positive outcomes and through creating management fashion trendsetting rhetoric.

To promote the use of HR analytics, academic institutions and the HR profession need to train HR professionals in the use and benefits of HR analytics.

We lay the groundwork to improve our understanding of the role media plays in influencing how new HRM practices spread across organizations. We introduce the application of an emerging big data analytic technique, natural language processing, to analyze published media on HR analytics.

Agriculture is under pressure to produce more food under increasingly variable climate conditions. Consequently, producers need management innovations that lead to improved physical and financial productivity. Currently, farm accounting technologies lack the sophistication to allow producers to analyse productivity of water. Furthermore water-related agricultural technology (“agtech”) systems do not readily link to accounting innovations. This study aims to establish a conceptual and practical framework for linking temporal, biophysical and management decision-making to accounting by develop a soil moisture and climate monitoring tool.

The paper adopts an exploratory mixed-methods approach to understand supply of and demand for water accounting and water-related agtech; and bundling these innovations with farm accounting to generate a stable tool with the ability to improve agricultural practices over time. Three phases of data collection are the focus here: first, a desk-based review of water accounting and water technology – including benchmarking of key design characteristics of these methods and key actor interviews to verify and identify trends, allowing for conceptual model development; second, a producer survey to test demand for the “bundled” conceptual model; third and finally, a participant-based case study in potato-farming that links the data from direct monitoring and remote sensing to farm accounts.

Design characteristics of water accounting and agtech innovations are bundled into an overall irrigation decision-making conceptual model based on in-depth review of available innovations and verification by key actors. Producer surveys suggest enough demand to pursue practical bundling of these innovations undertaken by developing an integrated accounting, soil moisture and climate monitoring tool on-farm. Productivity trends over two seasons of case study data demonstrate the pivotal role of accounting in leading to better technical irrigation decisions and improving water productivity.

The model can assist practitioners to gauge strengths and weaknesses of contemporary water accounting fads and fashions and potential for innovation bundling for improved water productivity. The practical tool demonstrates how on-farm irrigation decision-making can be supported by linking farm accounting systems and smart technology

This paper aims to understand how interest in the topic of knowledge management has evolved in the decade between 1998 and 2008 and to evaluate the claim that knowledge management is a management fashion.

The paper uses the academic publications database to investigate academic interest in the topic of knowledge management between 2000 and 2008, and company web sites to evaluate level of contemporary interest among global consultants and professional service firms in knowledge management.

The data presented challenge the idea that knowledge management can be regarded as a transient fashion, showing that academic interest in the topic has been sustained throughout the first decade of the twenty‐first century. However, in contrast to this, there has been a significant decline of interest in knowledge management among global consultancies and professional service firms.

The data on levels of academic interest in knowledge management were taken from only one source (ABI Proquest) and data on the level of interest among consultants and professional service firms were based on an analysis of their web sites.

The paper provides the first systematic evaluation of the level of interest in the topic of knowledge management in almost a decade.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

Scans the top 400 management publications in the world to identify the most topical issues and latest concepts. These are presented in an easy‐to‐digest briefing of no more than 1,500 words.

As management fashions come and go and the latest buzzwords in organizational life are replaced with new ones, consultants and gurus are blamed for spreading new ideas that never last. Charged with serving only their own interests with the introduction of each new managerial fad, consultants typically take the blame for selling solutions and strategies that bring few long‐term results.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.

This paper aims to describe and explain a contemporary phenomenon.

This is an analysis of research reports and fiction texts.

Universities use mergers and acquisitions to improve their ranking positions, ignoring the effects on research and teaching.

More attention should be paid to current managerial fashions.

An opposition to thoughtless fashion following may lead to positive changes.

If you mean “societal implications”, the state of universities is very important to democratic societies.

These are not for the author to judge.

Increasing competition and accreditation pressures on MBA programmes throughout the world to perform, in terms of competitive pricing and “world’s best practice” curricula, may produce outcomes inimical to the very goals being pursued. Two major themes of management education are considered in light of this trend. First, management education content and process is critically reviewed from an evolutionary non‐linear systems perspective particularly with respect to incorporating more effective yet deliberately destabilising double‐loop learning processes in the educative system. Business schools fail to incorporate such approaches because they over‐rely on single‐loop learning processes which ignore dynamic complexities in the human condition and in organisational systems. This helps explain why business schools and consultants readily incorporate management fads and fashions into their curricula. Second, the structure and delivery of management education programmes is reviewed. Conventional approaches here fail to take account of the more demanding experiential side of human learning and development which may be just as important as the rational approach which so often captures the delivery agenda. Again, the attraction of management fads and fashions is implicated as a major reason why business schools fail to incorporate double‐loop learning into their own agendas. In the words of the sages, you often get what you pay for and what you get is often simplistic, linear, de‐contextualised, and strongly prone to over‐application.