Transitory Collective Beliefs and the Dynamics of Tqm Consulting
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Academy of Management Journal 2006, Vol. 49, No. 2, 215–233. WHEN FASHION IS FLEETING: TRANSITORY COLLECTIVE BELIEFS AND THE DYNAMICS OF TQM CONSULTING ROBERT J. DAVID McGill University DAVID STRANG Cornell University We analyze changes over time in the types of consulting firms offering total quality management services. When TQM was a booming management fashion, consultants tended to be generalists with weak links to the technical foundations of the practice; after the fashion went bust, TQM consulting was increasingly populated by specialists with quality control expertise. These results suggest that fashionable practices can return to their technical roots after the hype is over, reversing the usual institutional trajectory. They also help explain why fashion booms are so fragile and how manage- ment practices can be sustained once a boom is over. Management fashions are a striking feature of ysis of management fashions. The first focuses on contemporary organizational life. Attention rapidly discourse as a means of understanding fashion or- coalesces around a management practice as a pow- igins and trajectories. Barley and Kunda (1992) ar- erful and robust means of achieving competitive gued that management discourse oscillates be- success. But as Abrahamson (1996: 257) argued, the tween rational and normative logics. Abrahamson collective belief that a practice “leads rational man- (1996; Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999) elaborated a agement progress” is relatively transitory. Enthusi- model of management fashion that comprises a asm soon wanes, skepticism mounts, and yester- supply side and a demand side and examined how day’s panacea becomes today’s run-of-the-mill “fashion setters” and external triggers interact to application. In the language we will use in this produce fashion cycles. Kieser (1997) identified the article, a “fashion boom” turns into a “fashion rhetorical characteristics of fashions that promote bust.” their diffusion (see also Jackson, 2001). Zbaracki These cycles in collective beliefs have important (1998) analyzed how total quality management consequences. Fashionable practices consume (TQM) rhetoric is both consumed and produced by scarce resources—not just time and money, but managers. Carson, Lanier, Carson, and Guidry leadership opportunities and organizational com- (2000) showed that cycles of media attention have mitment as well. And when the winds of fashion increased in amplitude and frequency over the last shift, managers and workers alike may be left jaded, half century. if not embittered, by the experience. Given the sig- A second body of research examines the causes nificance of fashion swings, it is not surprising that and consequences of fashion adoption. For exam- scholarly attention has increasingly turned to in- ple, Osterman (1994) linked early adoption of TQM vestigate their sources and internal dynamics. and related innovations to corporate strategy, CEO Two research strategies dominate empirical anal- philosophy, and the pressure of international com- petition. Westphal, Gulati, and Shortell (1997) An earlier version of this paper received the 2004 Best found evidence for network contagion among hos- Paper Award from the Organizational Theory Division of pitals and demonstrated a shift from “customized” the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada. We to “conforming” applications as TQM became in- thank Heather Haveman, Paul Ingram, Jan Jo¨rgensen, creasingly popular. Staw and Epstein (2000) Will Mitchell, Wesley Sine, Ithai Stern, Anand Swami- showed that “bandwagon” adoption of TQM was nathan, Demetrios Vakratsas, and colloquium partici- unrelated to the firm’s bottom line, but did bolster pants at the University of Chicago, the University of New corporate reputation and CEO pay. Other studies South Wales, EGOS, and the Academy of Management for their helpful comments on this research. We are also have identified performance effects, but only where grateful to three anonymous AMJ reviewers and Associ- TQM was most deeply and systematically imple- ate Editor C. Chet Miller for their insightful feedback and mented (Easton & Jarrell, 1998; Hendricks & Sin- guidance. ghal, 1999; Powell, 1995). 215 216 Academy of Management Journal April Although this work has revealed important reg- provided TQM over time. We conclude by consid- ularities in discourse and organizational adoption, ering the implications of our results for theories of much less is known about the supply side of the management fashion, as well as by discussing the management fashion market. Management consult- generality of our analysis and possible avenues for ants—a key group of fashion suppliers—have been future research. the subject of keen ethnographic accounts (e.g., Clark, 1995) but few large-scale empirical studies. THE LIFE CYCLE OF TOTAL This gap in research is unfortunate, because con- QUALITY MANAGEMENT temporary managerial innovation is not typically a “do-it-yourself” activity. Indeed, Wood (2002) Total quality management refers broadly to the found that 70 percent of firms used consultants implementation of organization-wide quality im- when embarking on organizational change projects, provement programs. Core principles include cus- and Buono noted that consultants have become tomer focus, reduction of variability, continuous “increasingly visible in most, if not all, organiza- improvement, and employee participation (Dean & tional initiatives” (2001: vii). Thus, management Bowen, 1994; Hackman & Wageman, 1995). Opera- fashions offer implicit theories of organizational tional elements generally include individual qual- performance, but how consultants implement these ity training, the formation of cross-functional pro- practices is likely to have a significant effect on cess improvement teams, supplier partnerships, organizational outcomes as well as on the credibil- and quality councils. TQM thus combines a tech- ity of the management techniques themselves. nical focus centered on statistical analysis of large- This article studies the consulting firms that pro- volume processes with a behavioral focus on team- vided TQM services between 1992 and 2001, a work, empowerment, and culture change. period during which TQM went from the limelight In line with Abrahamson and Fairchild’s (1999) to the background of the management stage. Simple analysis, TQM’s fashion boom was triggered by per- supply and demand considerations suggest that the formance gaps and the collapse of prior fashions. In size of the TQM consulting market should vary the 1970s and 1980s, American companies lost with TQM’s fashion status; our focus is, however, considerable market share to Japanese firms in in- on the composition of that market. We ask, What dustries like steel, consumer electronics, and auto- kinds of consulting firms provided TQM during its mobiles. This loss of market share led to much fashion boom? and What kinds of consulting firms consternation surrounding American industrial provided TQM during its fashion bust? productivity and an intense search for Japan’s The first goal of this article is to draw attention to “management secrets.” The result was a variety of management consultants as an important yet ne- fads linked to American perceptions of Japan. Ini- glected organizational population and to discover tial forays into Japanese management methods regularities in the way they respond to fashion were narrow in scope, and they generally failed to cycles. But we also think that these regularities can hold sway for long; bottom-up initiatives like qual- furnish theoretical insight into the underlying dy- ity circles wilted in the absence of a supportive namics of management fashion and speak to infrastructure, while production techniques like broader issues of institutional change. To fore- just-in-time (JIT) lacked mobilizing potential (for a shadow our argument and results: we find that social movement perspective on organizational TQM’s fashion boom drew in large numbers of change programs, see Strang and Jung [2005]). generalist consultants and firms with weak links to By the mid 1980s, a variety of leading companies TQM’s technical roots, while in the fashion bust, were moving toward more integrated, corporation- TQM consulting swung back toward specialists and wide approaches to quality improvement. Firms firms with expertise in quality control. These sup- like Ford, Xerox, and Westinghouse built on both ply-side dynamics suggest that fashionable prac- the successes and failures of their quality circle tices can return to their technical roots after the efforts. In developing more broadly based pro- hype is over, reversing the usual institutional tra- grams, they turned to “quality gurus” like Philip jectory (Tolbert & Zucker, 1983; Westphal et al., Crosby, W. Edwards Deming, and Joseph Juran. 1997). They also help explain why fashion booms Also important were direct contacts with Japanese are so fragile, and how management practices can subsidiaries (Cole, 1999) and small quality-man- be sustained once a boom is over. agement consulting firms. We begin by tracing the life cycle of total quality The combination of an economic downturn in management and delineating its fashion boom and the late 1980s, the demise of earlier responses to fashion bust. We then develop and test hypotheses Japan, and success stories describing early corpo- about changes in the types of consulting firms that ration-wide programs helped launch TQM’s fash- 2006 David and Strang 217 FIGURE 1 TQM Discourse ion boom. Core