In search of excellence: Fads, success stories, and adaptive emulation

American Journal of Sociology

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 147-182

  Strang, David ^a   Macy, Michael W ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0035402670     PISSN: 00029602     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/323039     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. Abrahamson, Eric, and Gregory Fairchild. 1999. "Management Fashion: Lifecycles, Triggers, and Collective Learning Processes." Administrative Science Quarterly 44: 708-40.
2. Abrahamson, Eric, and Lori Rosenkopf. 1993. "Institutional and Competitive Bandwagons: Using Mathematical Modeling as a Tool to Explore Innovation Diffusion." Academy of Management Review 18:487-517.
3. Anderson, Philip, and Michael L. Tushman. 1990. "Technological Discontinuities and Dominant Designs: A Cyclical Model of Technological Change." Administrative Science Quarterly 35:604-33.
4. Arthur, W. Brian. 1989. "On Competing Technologies and Lock-in by Historical Events: The Dynamics of Allocation under Increasing Returns." Economic Journal 99: 116-31.
5. Axelrod, Robert. 1998. The Complexity of Cooperation. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.
6. Banerjee, Abhijit V. 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior." Quarterly Journal of Economics 107:797-817.
7. Bikhchandani, Sushil, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch. 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades." Journal of Political Economy 100:992-1026.
8. Burns, Lawton R. 1982. "The Diffusion of Unit Management among U.S. Hospitals." Hospital and Health Services Administration 27:43-57.
9. Burns, Lawton R., and Douglas R. Wholey. 1993. "Adoption and Abandonment of Matrix Management Programs: Effects of Organizational Characteristics and Interorganizational Networks." Academy of Management Journal 36:106-38.
10. Burt, Ronald S. 1987. "Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion versus Structural Equivalence." American Journal of Sociology 92:1287-1335.
11. Carley, Kathleen, and M. Prietula. 1998. "Computational Approach to Organizations and Organizing." In Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Organizations and Organizing, edited by M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.
12. Carley, Kathleen, and D. Svoboda. 1996. "Modeling Organizational Adaptation as Simulated Annealing Process." Sociological Methods and Research 25:3-30.
13. Carroll, Glenn R., and J. Richard Harrison. 1998. "Organizational Demography and Culture: Insights from a Formal Model and Simulation." Administrative Science Quarterly 43:637-67.
14. Castorina, Paul, and Brian Wood. 1988. "Circles in the Fortune 500: Why Circles Fail." Journal for Quality and Participation 11:40-41.
15. Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. 1962. Strategy and Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
16. Cohen, Michael. 1998. Foreword to Simulating Organizations: Computational Models of Institutions and Groups, edited by M. Prietula, K. Carley, and L. Gasser. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
17. Cole, Robert E. 1979. "Made in Japan-Quality Control Circles." Across the Board 16: 72-78.
18. _. 1989. Strategies for Learning. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
19. _. 1999. Managing Quality Fads: How American Business Learned to Play the Quality Game. New York: Oxford University Press.
20. Coleman, James S., Elihu Katz, and Herbert Menzel. 1966. Medical Innovation. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
21. Conell, Carol, and Samuel Cohn. 1995. "Learning from Other People's Actions: Environmental Variation and Diffusion in French Coal Mining Strikes, 1890-1935." American Journal of Sociology 101:366-403.
22. Cyert, Richard M., and James G. March. 1963. A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
23. David, Paul A. 1985. "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY." American Economic Review 75:32-37.
24. Davis, Gerald F. 1991. "Agents without Principles? The Spread of the Poison Pill through the Intercorporate Network." Administrative Science Quarterly 36:583-613.
25. DiMaggio, Paul J., and Walter W. Powell. 1983. "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields." American Sociological Review 48:147-60.
26. Drago, Robert. 1988. "Quality Circle Survival: An Exploratory Analysis." Industrial Relations 27:336-51.
27. Easton, George, and Sherry Jarrell. 1998. "The Effects of Total Quality Management on Corporate Performance: An Empirical Investigation." Journal of Business 71: 253-307.
28. Eaton, Adrienne E. 1994. "The Survival of Employee Participation Programs in Unionized Settings." Industrial and Labor Relations Review 47:371-89.
29. Fligstein, Neil. 1990. The Transformation of Corporate Control. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
30. Freund, William C., and Eugene Epstein. 1982. People and Productivity. Homewood, Ill.: Dow Jones-Irwin.
31. Geber, Beverly. 1986. "Quality Circles: The Second Generation." Training 23:54-61.
32. Gilovich, Thomas. 1993. How We Know What Ain't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. New York: Free Press.
33. Goodman, Paul S. 1980. "Quality of Work Lie Projects in the 1980s." Labor Law Journal 487-94.
34. Granovetter, Mark S. 1973. "The Strength of Weak Ties." American Journal of Sociology 78:1360-80.
35. _. 1978. "Threshold Models of Collective Behavior." American Journal of Sociology 83:1420-43.
36. Gray, George. 1993. "Quality Circles: An Update." SAM Advanced Management Journal 58:41-47.
37. Greve, Henrich R. 1995. "Jumping Ship: The Diffusion of Strategy Abandonment." Administrative Science Quarterly 40:444-73.
38. Hackman, J. Richard, and Ruth Wageman. 1995. "Total Quality Management: Empirical, Conceptual, and Practical Issues." Administrative Science Quarterly 40: 309-42.
39. Hannan, Michael T., and John Freeman. 1984. "Structural Inertia and Organizational Change." American Sociological Review 49:149-64.
40. _. 1987. "The Ecology of Organizational Founding: American Labor Unions, 1836-1985." American Journal of Sociology 94:910-43.
41. Haunschild, Pamela R. 1993. "Interorganizational Imitation: The Impact of Interlocks on Corporate Acquisition Activity." Administrative Science Quarterly 38:564-92.
42. Haveman, Heather A. 1993. "Follow the Leader: Mimetic Isomorphism and Entry into New Markets." Administrative Science Quarterly 38:593-627.
43. Hill, Stephen. 1991. "Why Quality Circles Failed but Total Quality Management Might Succeed." British Journal of Industrial Relations 29:541-68.
44. Hirsch, Paul M. 1986. "From Ambushes to Golden Parachutes: Corporate Takeovers as an Instance of Cultural Framing and Institutional Integration." American Journal of Sociology 91:800-837.
45. Holden, Robert T. 1986. "The Contagiousness of Aircraft Hijacking." American Journal of Sociology 91:874-904.
46. Kimberly, John R. 1981. "Managerial Innovation." Pp. 84-104 in Handbook of Organizational Design, edited by W. H. Starbuck and P. C. Nystrom. New York: Oxford University Press.
47. Kraatz, Matthew S., and Edward J. Zajac. 1996. "Exploring the Limits of the New Institutionalism: The Causes and Consequences of Illegitimate Organizational Change." American Sociological Review 61:812-36.
48. Lant, Theresa K. 1992. "Aspiration Level Adaptation: An Empirical Exploration." Management Science 38:623-44.
49. Lawler, Edward E., Ill and Susan A. Mohrman. 1985. "Quality Circles after the Fad." Harvard Business Review 65-71.
50. Levinthal, Daniel, and James G. March. 1981. "A Model of Adaptive Organizational Search." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 2:307-33.
51. Macy, Michael W. 1997. "Identity, Interest and Emergent Rationality." Rationality and Society 9:427-48.
52. Macy, Michael W., and Andreas Flache. 1995. "Beyond Rationality in Theories of Choice." Annual Review of Sociology 21:73-91.
53. Macy, Michael W., and David Strang. 2001. "Dedicated Followers of Success: A Computational Model of Fashionable Innovation." In Simulating Organizational Societies: Theories, Models and Ideas, edited by Alessandro Lomi and Eric Larsen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
54. March, James G. 1991. "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning." Organization Science 2:71-87.
55. March, James G., and Herbert A. Simon. 1958. Organizations. New York: Wiley.
56. Mezias, Stephen J., and Theresa Lant. 1994. "Mimetic Learning and the Evolution of Organizational Populations." Pp. 174-98 in Evolutionary Dynamics of Organizations, edited by Joel A. C. Baum and Jitendra V. Singh. New York: Oxford University Press.
57. Mintzberg, Henry S. 1994. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning. New York: Free Press.
58. Mizruchi, Mark S., and Lisa C. Fein. 1999. "The Social Construction of Organizational Knowledge: A Study of the Uses of Coercive, Mimetic, and Normative Isomorphism." Administrative Science Quarterly 44:653-83.
59. Montaigne, Michel De. 1993. The Essays: A Selection. New York: Penguin.
60. Peters, Thomas J., and Waterman, Robert H., Jr. 1982. In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper & Row.
61. Powell, Walter W. 1991. "Expanding the Scope of Institutional Analysis." Pp. 183-203 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
62. Prahalad, C. K., and Gary Hamel. 1994. Competing for the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
63. Prietula, M., K. Carley, and L. Gasser. 1998. Computational Models of Institutions and Groups. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
64. Rogers, Everett M. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press.
65. Schelling, Thomas C. 1978. Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: W.W. Norton.
66. Smelser, Neil J. 1962. Theory of Collective Behavior. New York: Free Press.
67. Snow, David A. 1993. Shakubaku: A Study of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist Movement in America, 1960-1975. New York: Garland.
68. Strang, David. 1997. "Cheap Talk: Managerial Discourse on Quality Circles as an Organizational Innovation." Presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Toronto.
69. Strang, David, and John W. Meyer. 1993. "Institutional Conditions for Diffusion." Theory and Society 22:487-512.
70. Strang, David, and Sarah A. Soule. 1998. "Diffusion in Organizations and Social Movements: From Hybrid Corn to Poison Pills." Annual Review of Sociology 24: 265-90.
71. Strang, David, and Mary C. Still. 1999. "Influence and Innovation within the Business Community: Who Does an Elite Organization Emulate?" Presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Chicago.
72. Tolbert, Pamela S., and Lynne G. Zucker. 1983. "Institutional Sources of Change in the Formal Structure of Organizations: The Diffusion of Civil Service Reform." Administrative Science Quarterly 28:22-39.
73. Walton, Richard E. 1975. "The Diffusion of New Work Structures: Explaining Why Success Didn't Take." Organizational Behavior 3-21.
74. Westphal, James D., Ranjay Gulati, and Stephen M. Shortell. 1997. "Customization or Conformity: An Institutional and Network Perspectcive on the Content and Consequences of TQM Adoption." Administrative Science Quarterly 42:366-94.
75. Wilgoren, Jodi. 2000. "Seeking to Clone Schools of Success for Poor." New York Times, p. 1. August 16.
76. Zeggelink, Evelyn. 1994. "Dynamics of Structure: An Individual Oriented Approach." Social Networks 16:295-333.
77. Zeitz, Gerald, Vikos Mittal, and Brian McAuley. 1999. "Distinguishing Adoption and Entrenchment of Management Practices: A Framework for Analysis." Organizational Studies 20:741-76.