Undermining Efficiency: A Conceptual History of How Management’s ‘Axiom Number One’ Limits Innovation

Management studies inertia and lack of substantive innovation is claimed to stem from a combination of individual decisions and institutional pressures. Yet the role of the field's foundational concepts in explaining its stagnation has yet to be explored. This paper engages in a "conceptual history" of the concept of efficiency, from its pre-modern form to its transformation and adoption as management studies' foundational and fundamental good. This history enables us to see how efficiency's transformation from a particular political device to an unquestionable fundamental axiom has obscured alternative paths of development, and exacerbated the stagnation currently observed within the field at a time of existential crises