Coevolution in Management Fashion

An Agent-Based Model of Consultant-Driven Innovation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2223975
AutoresDavid Strang (Cornell University), Robert J David (0000-0002-8335-794X, McGill University), Saeed Akhlaghpour (0000-0001-5305-8677)
Año2014
Volumen120
Número1
Páginas226-264
Fecha de publicación2014-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAmerican Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0002-9602 • E-ISSN: 1537-5390
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/677206
PMID25705784
OpenAlexW2033317664
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas35

The rise of management consultancy has been accompanied by increasingly marked faddish cycles in management techniques, but the mechanisms that underlie this relationship are not well understood. The authors develop a simple agent-based framework that models innovation adoption and abandonment on both the supply and demand sides. In opposition to conceptions of consultants as rhetorical wizards who engineer waves of management fashion, firms and consultants are treated as boundedly rational actors who chase the secrets of success by mimicking their highest-performing peers. Computational experiments demonstrate that consultant-driven versions of this dynamic in which the outcomes of firms are strongly conditioned by their choice of consultant are robustly faddish. The invasion of boom markets by low-quality consultants undercuts popular innovations while simultaneously restarting the fashion cycle by prompting the flight of high-quality consultants into less densely occupied niches. Computational experiments also indicate conditions involving consultant mobility, aspiration levels, mimic probabilities, and client-provider matching that attenuate faddishness

Abandonment (legal) · Boom · Business · Coevolution · Industrial organization · Opposition (politics) · Outsourcing · Political science · Quality (philosophy) · Rhetorical question · Business Strategy and Innovation · Computer Science · Ecology · Engineering · Innovation and Knowledge Management · Management and Organizational Studies · Marketing