Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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).

Findings

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.

Originality/value

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.

中文翻译：

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管理时尚的扩散：大众化视角

目的

本文旨在调查管理时尚在学术和从业者社区中的短暂性，以阐明它们在时尚传播中的作用。

设计/方法/方法

本研究追溯了 50 多年来在面向实践者和学术期刊中的以下时尚的生命周期：平衡计分卡、业务流程再造、设计思维、知识管理、学习型组织、目标管理 (MBO)、矩阵组织和总体质量管理（TQM）。

发现

与文献中感叹的学术-从业者差距相反，这项研究表明，总体而言，这些时尚没有这种差距，但发现处理这些时尚的强度存在差异。这两个社区共同刺激、维持和放弃时尚，因为大多数时尚的生命周期在两个社区中都相互反映。这提供了一种当代普及形式的证据，即在学术期刊和面向实践者的期刊之间进行动态的知识交流，而不是传统的知识从学术界到实践的单向转移。

原创性/价值

本文首次在学术期刊和面向实践者的期刊中同时研究多种时尚，通过历史比较研究它们在时尚传播中的作用。