This theory-development case research of the quality circle management fashion focuses forward three features of management-knowledge entrepreneurs' discourse promoting or discrediting so fashions: its lifecycle.

This theory-development case research of the quality circle management fashion focuses forward three features of management-knowledge entrepreneurs' discourse promoting or discrediting so fashions: its lifecycle, forces triggering stages in its lifecycle, and the mark of collective learning it nourished Results suggest, first, that variability in when different representations of knowledge entrepreneurs begin, continue, and stop promoting fashions explains variability in their lifecycles; inferior that historically unique conjunctions of forces, endogenous and exogenous to the management-fashion market, trigger and shape management fashions; and third, that emotionally charged, enthusiastic, and unreasoned discourse characterizes the upswings of management fashion waves, whereas more reasoned, unemotional, and qualified discourse characterizes their downswings, evidencing a pattern of superstitious collective learning [*]

Organizational theorists who close attention management discourse--what is said and written about management-related issues--have focused forward discourse promoting techniques for managing organizations and their employee (Abrahamson, 1989 1997; Barley and Kunda, 1992; Guillen, 1994; Shenhav, 1995) This focus has originated in part from the claim that managers use discourse about management techniques to communicate to organizational stakeholders that their organizations conform to institutional norms mandating the use of these techniques (Meyer and Rowan, 1977) More lately the importance of such management discourse has been further underscored at the proposition that it also enables the diffusion of management techniques across thousands of dissimilar organizations (Abrahamson, 1991) It does in this way by reinforcing the belief that these organizations are similar in ways that would cause them to benefit equally from adopting a management technique (Strang and Meyer 1994) For example, discourse claiming that all U o rganizations, like all Japanese organizations, would benefit from using so-called Japanese management techniques may have impelled the widespread diffusion of these techniques across thousands of disparate U organizations during the 1980 and early 1990 The notion that management discourse matters because it shapes the diffusion of management techniques has also drawn attention to the knowledge entrepreneur who effect such discourse--management consultants, for example--and to their interests in disseminating discourse promoting certain management techniques in order to trigger their diffusion (DiMaggio, 1988; Abrahamson, 1996a, 1996b; Jackson, 1996; Meyer 1996; Lamertz and Baum, 1998)

Research forward management discourse focused originally forward what has been called rhetorics: widely oral and written discourses justifying the use of families of related techniques for managing employee (Abrahamson, 1989 1997; Barley and Kunda, 1992; Guillen, 1994; Shenhav, 1995) The scientific management rhetoric, for example, promot a family of related management techniques, as it was as time and motion studies, rate setting, piece of work analysis, piece rate, and work measurement. In this article, we examine the parts of in the same state [i]or[/i] condition rhetorics that promote a single technique. We focus upon management fashions, relatively transitory collective beliefs, disseminated by the agency of the discourse of management-knowledge entrepreneur that a management technique is at the forefront of rational management progres [1] We reflection the often-noted waves in the popularity of discourse that assists single, fashionable management techniques and can cause their transient use by dint of thousands of organizations.

We examine management fashions for couple reasons. First, the focus in previous research has been upon institutionalized organizational forms and techniques, rather than forward understanding the rise and fall of uninstitutionalized or weakly institutionalized organizational forms and techniques. As Zucker (1988) noted, Hughes (1936: 180) defined institution as the "establishment of relative permanence of a distinct social sort." Initially, this and other definitions focused neoinstitutional theorists forward the relatively permanent stability of institutions, deemphasizing the studious mood of institutional change (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Hirsch and Lounsbury 1997) As Scott (1995) noted, neoinstitutionalists have begun studying change in expressions of how institutional permanence come forths or fails to emerge (eg Rowan, 1982; cabbage 1985, 1989; Brint and Karabel, 1991) by what means it diffuses and is reproduc despite environmental shogs (e.g., Tolbert and Zucker, 1983) and for what reason it breaks down through a proces of deinstitutionalization (eg Oliver, 1992; Davis and Thompson 1994) The focus has remained, however, onward changes influencing relatively permanent stability in institutionalized practices, rather than forward relatively constant transience in practices that are not institutionalized, like as the relatively constant transience in the popularity of fashionable management discourse promoting various management techniques (Abrahamson, 1991; Tolbert and Zucker 1996)