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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.

Examines the role played by business school academics in promoting management ideas through their teaching. Defines the concept of a popular management idea, and explains how the author identified bureaucracy, classical management, scientific management, human relations, neo‐human relations and guru theory, to be the most popular management idea families of the twentieth century. Reviews the existing literature on factors which may influence academics to select certain management ideas for presentation rather than others. Offers hypotheses based on the author′s own experiences as a business academic. Reports the findings of a small postal survey which explored academics′ reasons for choosing the topics to teach and compares the findings with the hypotheses presented earlier. Concludes by discussing the implications of this and further research, and considers the extent to which business academics now tend to follow management practice, rather than lead it. Finally, makes recommendations for future research in this field and suggests appropriate research methods to be used.

The purpose of this article is to illustrate and address idea gaps to bring improvement and add value to organizations.

A framework for ideas is developed to enhance and extend conventional management theory and practice.

It recognises the essential interaction and progression of ideas so that managers can more comprehensively encourage, promote, integrate, and advance ideas in their organisations.

A breakthrough passage is suggested and constructed.

This research aims to focus on the idea management system (IMS) with the main purpose of identifying and describing the factors that promote success in managing ideas, grounded on the analysis of case studies.

The method used consists of a case study and semi-structured interviews with those directly responsible for the management of ideas from four companies, which are presented in this paper.

The main findings, critical for the success of an IMS, are as follow: the involvement of top management, evidence of results, establishment of goals and objectives, dissemination of good results, willingness to share and develop ideas, complete transparency in the management of ideas, maintenance of dynamic and proactive attitudes and mainly recognition. All have been described.

This work presents a preliminary framework for further research toward the study of CSFs inherent to IMSs that is still bound by the limited number of case studies presented. Further research should be undertaken to broaden and consolidate the presented CFSs and their pertinence.

This study, although limited to four case studies, presents conclusive results that support managers of suggestion systems/IMSs in improving or deploying such systems. The main factors were identified and described. They can contribute to the effectiveness of employee suggestion system. It can be reasoned from this investigation that the contributions from employees toward the success of a company leads to excellence in business.

This paper aims to contribute to the multinational company (MNC) literature by studying the diffusion of a management idea within an MNC and its interaction with the MNC’s corporate immune system (CIS).

The qualitative single case study draws on evidence of how a management idea augments within an MNC and changes its development practice.

The study identifies four phases of the diffusion process and presents the interaction between the management idea and the CIS in each phase.

The more subsidiaries within an MNC that take the initiative to adopt a management idea, the harder will it become for the headquarters (HQ) to reject it. Thus, to ensure that changes in management practices are based on informed and, ideally, deliberate decisions, managers should critically evaluate management ideas immediately at inception.

The study breaks new ground by explaining how the CIS reacts to the diffusion of management ideas in MNCs.

In the history of business management thought, six idea families have predominated during the last eighty or so years — bureaucracy (Max Weber), scientific management (Frederick Winslow Taylor), classical management (Henri Fayol), human relations (Elton Mayo), neo‐human relations (Abraham Maslow). To these one can add the more recent contributions of different writers under the heading of guru theory. The first five idea families are well known, but the sixth requires explanation. Gury theory achieved prominence during the 1980s. While not yet featuring extensively in management textbooks it has received widespread attention in the financial and business press (Lorenz, 1986; Dixon, 1986; Clutterbuck and Crainer, 1988; Pierce and Newstrom, 1988; Heller, 1990). Guru theory consists of the diverse and unrelated writings of well‐known company chief executives such as Lee lacocca (Chrysler), Harold Geneen (ITT), John Harvey‐Jones (ICI) and John Sculley (Apple Computer); of management consultants like Tom Peters and Philip Crosby; and of business school academics like Michael Porter, Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Henry Mintzberg. Since their contributions are so heterogeneous, and as the writings draw so much of their authority from the individual authors themselves, the adopted label is felt to be appropriate.

This paper aims to explore how management practitioners make sense of management fashions as sedimented elements within organizations.

To further understanding about sedimentation in management fashion, an institutional perspective was used.

This analysis reveals that sedimented fashions within organizations are framed as comprising different forms that are systematically associated with divergent evolution patterns.

This study extends the current literature on management fashion by showing how, unlike present conceptualizations, the long‐term impact of fashionable ideas in organizations cannot be considered a single entity with a uniform pattern of development. Building on this, the paper seeks to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the evolution of popular management ideas in organizational practice, which opens fruitful new research directions.

This paper may help managers, as important consumers of fashionable ideas, to better understand how elements of fashions may remain in organizations and play an important conditional role in future change initiatives.

Despite the substantial attention to the field‐level dissemination and evolution of popular management ideas in the management fashion literature, the possible long‐term impact of these ideas within organizations has received scant attention beyond the assumed transience of a fashion's discourse and the possible persistence of the organizational practices associated with a fashion.

Building on recent research that emphasizes the role of managers as central in the adoption and implementation of management ideas, the purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons why managers may vary in their responses toward these ideas.

Drawing on a cognitive perspective, the research uses a repertory grid approach to analyze survey data from 189 managers.

Rather than stressing only the role of organizational context, the paper indicates the likelihood that more invariant mental models shaped by especially position and disposition play an important role in explaining the way managers view and eventually implement management ideas.

The findings indicate the significance of cognitive factors in explaining managers’ attitudes toward ideas, and advance the understanding of the variety in managers’ responses toward these ideas, particularly in implementation trajectories.

The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to the benchmarking literature by examining the historical emergence and evolution of benchmarking using the management fashion perspective as a theoretical lens.

The research approach followed in this paper can be characterized as explorative and theoretical. Insights from different data sources have been combined to provide a rich description of the emergence and evolution of benchmarking.

This analysis casts new light on several aspects of benchmarking’s emergence and evolution pattern. The characteristics of the benchmarking idea give it potential as a fashionable management tool. The widespread popularity and longevity of benchmarking can to a large extent be explained by the efforts of various actors to turn benchmarking into an institution.

The paper is explorative and is limited by a reliance on secondary sources.

Although some researchers have noted that benchmarking could be viewed as a management fashion, management fashion theory has, only to a very limited extent, been used as a theoretical lens in the context of benchmarking. This research paper demonstrates that management fashion theory can provide valuable insights for research on benchmarking.