ABSTRACT
Managerial needs are rarely if ever satisfied, due to the nature of organizational life. The search by managers for valuable ideas is in fact encouraged rather than diminished. The changes in fashion in ideas can be explained with reference to the process of management fad displacement. The organizational problems which create the needs remain broadly constant. Thus the so-called ‘new’ solutions offered (management ideas and their associated techniques) tend to be similar to those which preceded them, Thus, ‘old’ products can be easily displaced with little psychological pain to managers, because the new ones are so similar. This final chapter considers the changing fashions in management ideas. It examines how seemingly contradictory management ideas happily coexist, and then accounts for the process of management fad creation and replacement. This is seen as the consequence of a complex interaction between management idea consumers and suppliers which operates at a number of different levels.
