The management guru and management fashion phenomenon

This article aims to present a profile of functional controllers created in German-speaking countries in the context of their competences and tasks for sustainable management and value chain creation. Sustainable chain management requires finding a balance between the economic, social, and environmental spheres, inside and outside the organizations, in all business functions/processes related to value chain formation. Managers for sustainable management need to have adequate and high-quality financial and non-financial information. They are crucial during the pandemic COVID-19 period. Functional controllers can provide this. Content analysis of job advertisements was used as a research method. The identification of competences was based on Cheetham and Chivers’ model. Tasks were referred to as essential functions of controlling. Descriptive statistics and the Student’s t-test with Cochran–Cox correction and the Wilcoxon-Mann–Whitney test were used to analyze the data. In terms of the studied controllers, more functional than meta competence was identified. There were more hard skills than soft skills. In terms of tasks, studied controllers are preoccupied with analysis, coordination and optimization, participation in management, definition of new tools, and reporting. The results confirm that functional controllers have an impact on sustainable development and value chain creation.

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Rhetoric and Myth in Management Fashion

Organization ◽

10.1177/135050849741004 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 49-74 ◽

Cited By ~ 292

Author(s):

Alfred Kieser

Keyword(s):

Management Fashion

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Diffusion, translation and the neglected role of managers in the fashion setting process: The case of MANS

Management Learning ◽

10.1177/1350507610395354 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 149-164 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Kees van Veen ◽

Jelle Bezemer ◽

Luchien Karsten

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Active Role ◽

Historical Account ◽

Role Changes ◽

Management Fashion ◽

Setting Process

In this article, we reconstruct the lifecycle of MANS, a less well-known Dutch management fashion. Studying less well-known fashions is necessary because it challenges existing understandings of management fashions. First, it is argued how such reconstructions can be helpful. It creates a need to combine existing diffusion and translation perspectives on management fashions, it accentuates existing limitations, and it brings unnoticed aspects of management fashions to the forefront. Second, a detailed historical account of the lifecycle of MANS itself will be presented to illustrate these points. Finally, two remarkable and new aspects of MANS are discussed. To begin with, MANS shows an active role of (collectives of) managers in different phases of the life cycle. Additionally, MANS draws attention to role changes of individuals involved. Concepts are not only diffused and translated by different individuals in different roles, but concepts also stimulate individuals to move from one role to another.

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Management Fads, Communities of Practice and Innovation

Handbook of Research on Communities of Practice for Organizational Management and Networking ◽

10.4018/978-1-60566-802-4.ch013 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 222-244

Author(s):

Athanasios Hadjimanolis

Keyword(s):

Communities Of Practice ◽

Organizational Performance ◽

Critical Evaluation ◽

Innovation Process ◽

Organizational Structures ◽

Incremental Innovation ◽

Management Fashion ◽

Current Trends ◽

Fashion Theory

This chapter introduces communities of practice (CoPs) as a useful framework for the elucidation of the innovation process in organizations. It argues that CoPs contribute to innovation through being more efficient than formal organizational structures. Innovation, however, comes in different forms and types and internal CoPs are more relevant for incremental innovation, while inter-organizational communities are more important for radical innovation. Furthermore the chapter focuses on a critical evaluation of the concept of community of practice through the lens of the management fashion theory and an assessment of the role of CoPs in knowledge creation and exchange at the various stages of the innovation process. It aims to provide an assessment of the contribution of communities of practice to innovation success and organizational performance and to summarize the current trends and future developments especially in inter-organizational virtual innovation communities.

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The Evolutionary Trajectory of the Agile Concept Viewed from a Management Fashion Perspective

Social Sciences ◽

10.3390/socsci9050069 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (5) ◽

pp. 69 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dag Øivind Madsen

Keyword(s):

Software Development ◽

Public Management ◽

Current Status ◽

Supply Side ◽

Evolutionary Trajectory ◽

Management Fashion ◽

Management Concepts ◽

Wide Range ◽

Contemporary Management ◽

Over Time

Agile is one of the most popular contemporary management concepts and buzzwords. This paper provides an in-depth examination of the influence of the Agile concept on the discourse, thinking and practices of organizations worldwide. The paper traces the emergence and evolution of the Agile concept from inception to the present by synthesizing findings from a wide range of academic and practitioner-oriented sources. Overall, the picture that emerges from the analysis is that the Agile concept has grown considerably in popularity and has become one of the most dominant concepts in public management discourse. The popularization of Agile has, to a large extent, been driven by an active supply-side made up of actors such as consultants, coaches, and trainers. Another finding is that the Agile concept has evolved considerably over time, from its initial presentation as a narrow and specialized concept rooted in the software development community to a much broader and general approach applicable across nearly all types of organizations and industries. The broadening of the concept has led to neologisms such as Agile Marketing, Agile Government, and Agile Management. The paper ends with reflections on the current status of Agile and some speculation about the concept’s likely future trajectory.

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