Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Fashion can be thought of as vogues, fads, rages, and crazes that rise and fall with alacrity but in the process can have direct and substantial effects on everyday life. Theories of fashion focus more narrowly on fashions as aesthetic forms such as clothing or haute couture that gratify our senses and emotional wellbeing. Abrahamson (1996) argues that management fashions are the result of a management fashion‐setting process. This is a process by which management fashion setters continuously redefine collective beliefs about which management techniques lead to rational management progress. Quality circles (QCs) exemplify management fashion. During the early 1980s fashion setters promoted the transient belief that QCs were at the forefront of management progress. The rhetoric that fashion setters used to promote this belief survives in the popular management press articles as well as in the proceedings of meetings of fashion setters who actively promoted the QC fashion. Figure 1 illustrates the rapid growth and then decline of articles on QCs. The numbers peaked in 1982 from practically nothing in 1978 and then fell back by more than 50 percent within three years.  Figure 1  Print‐media indicators of quality circles ( Abrahamson, 1996 ) ( 1996 ). Management fashion . Academy of Management Review , 21 ( 1 ), 254 – 85 . ( 1988 ). Circles in the Fortune 500: Why circles ... log in or subscribe to read full text