Methods for the Study of Management Ideas

This chapter surveys methodologies employed in the study of management ideas. It emphasizes the field’s rich variety of data collection, measurement, and inferential strategies. To map this landscape, the authors group studies by the number of cases they examine, from large N event history analyses based on archival data to ethnographies of a single organization. They give particular attention to bibliometrics and discourse analysis because these methods grapple with the interpretive and communicative processes that are central to management ideas and because techniques for capturing and analysing text are currently being revolutionized across the social sciences.

Business Media

Based on an overview of previous literature on business media, which shows a substantial degree of fragmentation, this chapter proposes an integrative theoretical framework using the concept of media logic defined as the technological, cultural, and organizational features that influence how management ideas are produced, distributed, and consumed. Considering the recent technological changes brought on by social media, the role of business media cannot be understood without considering the effects of transmediality and multimodality. Defined respectively as the movement of content through different types of media, these elements have an important impact on the nature of management ideas. The authors question the predominance of well-bounded ideas in a new technological convergence context with increasing loss of gatekeeping control to user-generated content. They propose that a renewed set of theoretical frameworks and methodological tools will allow business media research to understand the contemporary evolution of management ideas.

Instrumental Understanding of Management Ideas

This chapter discusses the instrumental status of management ideas through the lenses of three theoretical perspectives. While from the modernistic–rationalistic perspective, management ideas are conceived of as tools, they are also frequently described as legitimizing elements or fashions viewed from the social constructionist–symbolic perspective. However, seen from a pragmatic perspective—this chapter’s main analytical frame—the instrumental quality of a management idea cannot be decided upon a priori, as if it were a distinct property of each idea. Instead, the implementation phase stands out as critical for the shaping of management ideas. A pragmatic lens, such as offered by translation theory, helps to identify a range of possible trajectories of initiatives to implement management ideas. Some lead to instrumentalization and practical use, while others do not. It is argued that translation theory has the potential to guide practitioners’ efforts to instrumentalize management ideas.

Performance Implications of Management Ideas

Consultants and business gurus have stressed the positive implications of management ideas for performance. However, the evidence on whether management ideas lead to superior performance remains ambiguous. This chapter scrutinizes the link between management ideas and performance. It begins by reviewing research on technological resources-focused ideas, human resources-focused ideas, relational resources-focused ideas, and knowledge resources-focused ideas and shows that there is empirical support for a positive relationship between management ideas and organizational performance. However, this positive link only materializes and holds under certain conditions, which complicate the efforts of managers and organizations to reap the benefits of management ideas. The authors discuss two of these complications: the ‘performance dilemmas of management ideas’ and the ‘sustainability paradox of management ideas’. The chapter ends with a discussion of avenues for future research.

The Lifecycle of Management Ideas

This chapter distinguishes five stages in the lifecycle of management ideas: innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy, and rebirth. Research at each stage can help research at other stages. It also examines the lifecycle stages of both abstract and specific management ideas. Studying these simultaneously can help address some of the most resilient and enduring questions about each. Finally, the authors conceptualize the conjunction of forces which must co-occur to cause stage transitions. They do so to avoid drawing conclusions about why transitions happen when the same conclusions might be drawn when they do not.

Management Techniques

This chapter reviews research on management techniques—formal procedures for carrying out a management task. It identifies three main streams of research—a functionalist stream, viewing management techniques as best practices; an institutionalist stream, where management techniques are symbols of rationality; and an emerging practice-based stream, focusing on how management techniques come to be used in, and influence, managerial work. This line of research investigates management techniques as affordances to agents in organizations, and it is through this interaction with organizational agency that management techniques shape organizational processes (e.g. strategizing and consulting) and individual managers (e.g. uncertainty reduction). In this view, management techniques are found to play important roles in facilitating communication and knowledge creation in organizations, creating confidence and motivation for action, and reducing uncertainty for individual actors.

The System of Management Ideas

This chapter argues that there is a system of management ideas, that is, a set of institutionalized high level heuristics that guide organizational and individual behaviours in managerial reality, involve distinct knowledge that is transferred across time and space, may change as a result of local adaptation or innovation, and may be selected for or against. This system operates at multiple levels, particularly the individual, organizational, and institutional levels. A system of management ideas can be analysed through a micro-foundational approach, where actions of individual agents lead to an evolution of the system through processes of variation, selection, and retention. This approach is applied to the organizational level choice of adopting existing, fashionable management practices versus creating novel management practices. The authors present a process model depicting this make-or-buy choice in management practices and provide insights into why and when organizations choose each of these routes.

Changing the Critique

Who benefits from management ideas and practices? Whose authority do they promote? What kind of truths do they produce and to what effect? Such are the fundamental questions of a critical study of management ideas. In this chapter the authors offer a brief introduction to four of the main traditions (Marxism, post-modernism, feminism, and postcolonialism) that make up this complex field and then, drawing on Lacan’s four discourses framework, they question such critical knowledge itself. In particular they highlight how the conditions that have produced this form of management research have led to a number of unintended consequences, particularly a loss of relevance to praxis. In response, they suggest a new opening for the critique of management ideas by illustrating an activist-scholar project.

Management Ideas as Standards

This chapter discusses the relationship between management ideas and standards. It argues that all management ideas can be understood as standards in the sense of shared, voluntary and descriptive, rather than prescriptive, rules that one or several actors or organizations choose to apply. A few management ideas are presented in the form of codified standards, i.e. standards in a narrower sense. The authors explore why and how some management ideas are ‘translated’ into codified standards and how this process affects these management ideas. They also discuss the wider (intended and unintended) consequences of turning management ideas into codified standards.

The Consumers and Co-Producers of Management Ideas

Managers have frequently been portrayed as ‘the’ consumers of management ideas. This chapter argues that other actors (i.e. consultants, researchers, students, and citizens) are also relevant consumers. It discusses why and how these different actors consume management ideas and also explains why consuming ideas cannot be separated from co-producing them, since applying them or just thinking of applying them usually means adapting them in innovative ways to specific contexts. The authors conclude that often one group of actors, e.g. consultants, is dependent on the cooperation of another one, e.g. managers, to be able to co-produce and implement management ideas.