Brad Jackson.

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Brad Jackson. novel York: Routledge, 2001. 208 pp $2995 paper.

for what purpose would bright, well-educated managers in subordination to intense pressure to "get it right" line up like lemmings to caper on one sure-fire, can't-miss panacea after the other? The list includes TQM Theory Z (and Y and X) Management by way of Objectives, Zero-Based Budgeting, MBWA, Matrix Management, Kaiban, One-Minute Managing, Business Proces Reengineering, good point Outsourcing, Empowerment, JIT, and Benchmarking, to name a not many of the more prominent "flavors of the month" Brad Jackson charts the familiar trajectories: an electric rise to prominence followed by way of progressive decline and often vitriolic backlash. Despite the contagious enthusiasm these emotions seem to inspire, numerous observes show that about three disclosed of four managers end up disappointed with the terminates What is most puzzling is that this disappointment solitary seems to whet their appetites for the nearest hot innovation.

The maze is compounded, Jackson notes, according to the curious reluctance of academics to gaze carefully at what most disdain as for a like reason much snake oil, as if taking these "silver bullets" seriously as a research topic might recommend that one takes them seriously as prescriptive innovations. As a connection while management gurus and the fads they inspire have "received considerable media attention . . they have not been make liableed to any form of sustained and systematic academic analysis" (p 5) with the exception of Abrahamson and his collaborators, whom Jackson cites extensively.

Jackson's major goal is to demonstrate the theoretical richness of this empirical material when exposeed to a carefully detailed inspection and analysis. More precisely, he aims to bare the infectious appeal of ideas that revolve out to be simplistic and contradictory in ways that make them risky to implement. His secondary aim is to equip academics to "intervene in this proces to make it a more technically useful, collective learning process" (p 6) He is vague here (perhaps intentionally) as to whether the objective is for academics to figure without how to inoculate managers from these contagions or by what means to turn the epidemics into something more benign, if not therapeutic.

Jackson identifies four basic approaches to explaining management gurus and fashions: (1) the rational approach, in which competitive urgencys force managers to watch for better mousetraps and, if not adopt early, at least avoid being the last to sign upon (which fails to explain the downside of the fashion round of years a problem Jackson overlooks); (2) the structural approach, in which economic, political, and cultural generals intersect to open and shut up opportunity space for consultants to fill; (3) the institutional approach, in which organizational decision makers must rely upon "best practice" to navigate uncertainty, creating biases toward isomorphism and self-reinforcing cascades of adoption and abandonment; and (4) the charismatic approach, in which "gurus" provide reassurance and affirmation to executives bring face to faceed with debilitating uncertainty and spiraling competition. This last approach differs from the first three in emphasizing psychological rather than ecological or sociological factors that account f or the rapid diffusion of innovative organizational technologies. Jackson criticizes all four approaches, however, for tending to equate the emerging see the verb of gurus and the diffusion of fashions. His theoretical innovation is to argue that the dynamics that underlie the career trajectories of a Michael Hammer or Stephen party or Peter Senge are extremely different from the processes that explain the adoption and abandonment of "Re-engineering" or "Effectiveness" or "Organizational Learning." The appeal of gurus is quite distinct from that of irascible business practices. This point alone makes the main division important and worth assigning to pupils and is likely to force reconsideration of theories of fashionable innovation.

Using "fantasy theme analysis," a dramaturgical quality of rhetorical criticism, Jackson then focuses forward the rhetorics used by three manner of moving entrepreneurs (Hammer, Covey, and Senge) to engage the attention and affective commitment of a managerial following. Ironically, Jackson's explanatory strategy illustrates the confirmation bias that may explain lemming-like behavior among intendedly rational managers focused not forward popularity but performance. The business pres focuses forward "success stories" far more than it features failures, unles the failure is in plain english catastrophic. Similarly, Jackson generalizes from a appoint of consultant superstars. The three gurus he studies all utilize highly effective and remarkably similar rhetorics. The problem is that centurys of other consultants are also highly skilled at tickling the insecurities of potential clients, nevertheless only a few come to rival refuge stars and televangelists in their ability to electrify. Jackson yields to the cognitive bias that traps journalists and popular note ators who assume that superstars must really be special. still for every Britney Spears or Robert Schuller there are centurys of garage bands and stub preachers out there who could just as easily cover the spotlight. The power law of celebrity does not throw back the skewed distribution of talent any more than the power law of organizational size mirrors the skewed distribution of the ability to shoot Stardom is not just about the star, it is also about the emergent properties of a self-organizing firmament whose interdependent component parts influence and affirm one another's beliefs and decisions (often indirectly, inadvertently, and unconsciously) in reply to the influence they receive.

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