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.

中文翻译：

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调和管理时尚理论和新制度主义中关于管理概念的短暂性和持久性的相互矛盾的预测

目的

尽管借鉴了新制度理论装置和本体论，管理时尚理论被理解为一种解释流行思想和实践的短暂性的理论，而制度理论则解释了它们的稳定性、持久性和进一步的制度化。简而言之，这两种理论似乎相互对立，描述和预测了不同的、不可比较的扩散轨迹和组织行为模式。本文的目的是统一这两种相互竞争的观点。

设计/方法/方法

本文试图通过提供对制度变迁和去制度化的另一种理解和概念化以及将新兴概念与已经流行的时尚区分开来，将管理时尚理论与新制度主义进一步统一。

发现

大多数新兴概念从未流行并消失，而很少有它们获得大量媒体关注并广泛传播成为新的管理时尚。一旦这些概念得到广泛普及，制度力量就会支持它们并导致进一步的制度化。制度变迁不被理解为对现有管理时尚的侵蚀、中断或消失的去制度化，而是媒体报道的减少，而媒体的注意力集中在新的时尚概念上。以前的管理方式被制度化，制度变迁发生在将注意力转移到新的方式上，扩散和制度化周期重新开始。因此，关于同构和制度化作为不可逆趋势的制度预测可以与 MF 对时尚流行钟形曲线的预测统一起来。因此，管理时尚理论的假设和预测可以源自新制度主义，反之亦然。

实际影响

本文旨在涵盖、概括和解释各种管理和组织概念的不同轨迹，从制度理论和管理时尚理论中推导出理论命题。本文提供的理论和方法论思想有助于未来对管理方式和传播的研究。对管理概念演变的研究可以从提出的分类和生命周期不同阶段之间的因果关系中受益。

原创性/价值

统一看似冲突和不同的观点和观点可以使组织理论在解释力和本体论可通约性方面更加连贯。在其他成熟科学之后，我们共享相同的进步概念，即实现统一的目标并证明不同的组织理论仍然描述相同的现实。