Management fad is a term used to characterize a change in philosophy or operations implemented by a business or institution. The term is subjective and tends to be used in a

pejorative A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...

sense, as it implies that such a change is being implemented (often by

management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...

on its

employee Employment is a relationship between two parties regulating the provision of paid labour services. Usually based on a contract, one party, the employer, which might be a corporation, a not-for-profit organization, a co-operative, or any ot ...

s, with little or no input from them) solely because it is (at the time) "popular" within managerial circles, and not necessarily due to any real need for organizational change. The term further implies that once the underlying philosophy is no longer "popular", it will be replaced by the newest "popular" idea, in the same manner and for the same reason as the previous idea. Several authors have argued that new management ideas should be subject to greater critical analysis, and for the need for greater conceptual awareness of new ideas by managers. Authors Leonard J. Ponzi and Michael Koenig believe that a key determinant of whether any management idea is a "management fad" is the number and timing of published articles on the idea. In their research, Ponzi and Koenig argue that once an idea has been discussed for around 3–5 years, if after this time the number of articles on the idea in a given year decreases significantly (similar to the right-hand side of a bell curve), then the idea is most likely a "management fad".

Common characteristics

Management fads are often characterized by the following: *New

jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...

for existing

business process A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

es. *External

consultants A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servi ...

who specialize in the implementation of the fad. *A ''

certification Certification is the provision by an independent body of written assurance (a certificate) that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of a ...

'' or ''appraisal'' process performed by an external agency for a fee. *Amending the job titles of existing employees to include references to the fad. *Claims of a measurable business improvement via measurement of a

metric Metric or metrical may refer to: * Metric system, an internationally adopted decimal system of measurement * An adjective indicating relation to measurement in general, or a noun describing a specific type of measurement Mathematics In mathe ...

(e.g.

key performance indicator A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it eng ...

) that is defined by the fad itself. *An internal sponsoring department or individual that gains influence due to the fad's implementation. *Big words and complex phrases (

puffery In everyday language, puffery refers to exaggerated or false praise. Puffery serves to "puff up" what is being described. In law, puffery is usually invoked as a defense argument: it identifies futile speech, typically of a seller, which does ...

Origins

Consultants and even academics have developed new management ideas. Journalists may popularize new concepts. Like other

fashion Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fash ...

s, trends in management thought may grow, decline, and recur.

Judy Wajcman Judy Wajcman, is the Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the Principal Investigator of the Women in Data Science and AI project at The Alan Turing Institute. She is also a Visi ...

sees the human relations movement of the 1930s as a precursor of the later fashion of "transformational management".

Examples

The following management theories and practices appeared on a 2004 list of management fashions and fads compiled by

Adrian Furnham Adrian Frank Furnham (born 3 February 1953) is a South African-born British BPS chartered occupational psychologist and chartered health psychologist. He is currently an adjunct professor at BI Norwegian Business School and professor at Univer ...

, who arranged them in rough chronological order by their date of appearance, 1950s to 1990s: * Management by objectives *

Matrix management Matrix management is an organizational structure in which some individuals report to more than one supervisor or leader–relationships described as solid line or dotted line reporting. More broadly, it may also describe the management of cross-f ...

* Theory Z * One-minute management *

Management by wandering around The management by wandering around (MBWA), also management by walking around,"What is management by walking around (MBWA)", BusinessDictionary.com, 2010, webpage: . refers to a style of business management which involves managers wandering aroun ...

* Total quality management *

Business process reengineering Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a business management strategy originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and business processes within an organization. BPR aims to help organizations fundam ...

Delayering A flat organization (also known as horizontal organization or flat hierarchy) is an organizational structure with few or no levels of middle management between staff and executives. An organizational structure refers to the nature of the distribut ...

Empowerment Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming strong ...

* 360-degree feedback * Re-engineering *

Teamwork Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way. This concept is seen within the greater framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individua ...

Other theories and practices which observers have tagged as fads include: *

ISO 9000 The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO 90 ...

* Six SigmaThe 8 Stupidest Management Fads of All Time
CBS Money * the tendency to replace every occurrence of "data" in compound managerial terminology with "information", see e.g. information integration vs.

data integration Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of them. This process becomes significant in a variety of situations, which include both commercial (such as when two similar companies ...

Knowledge management Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...

Design thinking Design thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems. Des ...

DevOps DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (''Dev'') and IT operations (''Ops''). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary to ...

* Lean six sigma * Transformational leadership * 5S *

Agile software development In software development, agile (sometimes written Agile) practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/ end user(s), ...

Enterprise architecture frameworks Enterprise (or the archaic spelling Enterprize) may refer to: Business and economics Brands and enterprises * Enterprise GP Holdings, an energy holding company * Enterprise plc, a UK civil engineering and maintenance company * Enterprise ...

* "thriving on chaos" * Open-plan offices * Stack ranking, where employees are encouraged to rat each other out in order to secure their own advancement and budget * Consensus management *

Best practice A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to other known alternatives because it often produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing ...

* The Tao of

Leadership Leadership, both as a research area and as a practical skill, encompasses the ability of an individual, group or organization to "lead", influence or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The word "leadership" often gets v ...

Common characteristics

Origins

Examples

See also

References

Further reading