Stretching Concepts: The Role of Competing Pressures and Decoupling in the Evolution of Organization Concepts
研究了管理咨询师在组织概念成熟和衰退阶段如何应对保持合法性、提高效率和差异化竞争的多重压力，识别出七种应对策略及其对概念演化的影响。
To contribute to the understanding of the evolution of organization concepts, this article focuses on how consultants respond to competing pressures during the maturity and decline phases of an initially popular concept. Management consultants are important fashion setters, but the actual strategies they use to deal with the pressures to remain legitimate, increase efficiency and differentiate themselves from competitors remain unclear. Such supply-side dynamics likely influence how organization concepts evolve and are relevant for understanding how management knowledge may survive a fashion boom and bust. Using interview and print media data from 32 consultants from 14 consultancies, we identify seven response strategies, and show how these are associated with multiple pressures, and comprise different implications for the evolution of a concept. We argue that this variety of responses is essential to better understand the evolution of organization concepts and opens several fruitful research directions.