Diffusion Of Management Ideas Research Articles

Management education as an industry and MBA as a product: revisiting joint MBA programs using Porters five forces model

In recent literature, Management Education is frequently considered as a business industry, with MBA program as the flagship product. In an attempt to position their programs, business schools can be expected to move toward a convergence model for the diffusion of management ideas within the spirit of cooperation. Within this framework, a case study on joint and merged MBA programs in France has been analysed using Porter's five forces model and Nalebuff's and Brandenburger's coopetition and value net model to explain that Management Education is one of specific industries which use alliances to overcome competitive advantages. A synergistic competitive advantage is driven by the cooperation inside the industry of Management Education itself, with its cooperative programs. Instead of being threatened and bargained by the forces, the industry of management education challenges the forces with its cooperative programs.

Power and the diffusion of management ideas: The case of McKinsey & Co

In studies of the diffusion or translation of management ideas, power is frequently implied but is rarely theorised explicitly. Moreover, when it is recognised, the focus is often on only one form of power. This can obscure how different forms of power relate to each other, shape idea diffusion and connect to different forms of resistance. Using Lukes’ classic framing of power, we explore the activities of a key agent in the diffusion of ideas – management consultancy – and one of the leading players in that field – McKinsey & Co. We draw on diverse, publicly available forms of data on three different management ideas to identify how different forms of power and resistance enable and constrain the diffusion of management ideas. Our study emphasises both the dynamic relations between different forms of power over time and the importance of acknowledging the unintended consequences of power. At the same time, by focusing on power dynamics mostly operating outside of consulting projects, we add to our understanding of the role of consultancy in the diffusion of management ideas more generally.

The Influence of Intellectual Traditions on the Diffusion of Scientific Ideas

Whereas the diffusion of management ideas has received much attention in the literature, little is known about the diffusion of scientific ideas. This article aims to fill this gap in the literatur...

Management Consulting: Dynamics, Debates, and Directions

The purpose of this article is to: (i) provide a brief overview of the emergence and dynamics of the management consulting industry, (ii) summarize the findings from the extant literature, and (iii) identify relevant issues for related research in strategic communication. The article begins by putting management consulting into context by relating it to three other fields of management: practice, education and publishing, pointing out how their interaction furthers the diffusion of management ideas. Then, the article provides an overview of the development of management consulting, showing how consulting activities and firms changed in line with their client organizations, while managing to derive continued legitimacy by adapting their image to different types of “professionalism.” Finally, the article reviews the extant research on management consulting along three levels of analysis: industry, firm, and project, and discusses the implications of its main debates and insights for strategic communication consulting. The authors acknowledge support for the underlying research and the writing of this article from the European Commission (TSER Contract SOE1-CT97-1072) and the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation.

Popular concepts and the business management press

This article looks at frequency patterns of popular management concepts among scholarly and non-scholarly publication outlets. It analyzes differences in the general frequency patterns and reviews propositions concerning time-lags in the diffusion of management ideas in different media, using publication data for four popular management concepts (Total Quality, Lean, Outsourcing and Re-engineering) over an 18-year period. The analysis reveals differences in the presence and frequency patterns of the concepts studied in different types of publications. The assumption of a general time lag between non-scholarly and scholarly media cannot be sustained. The observed patterns can be related to the working logics of the different type of media as well as to the characteristics of the different concepts studied.