From Fashion to Virus: An Alternative Theory of Organizations’ Handling of Management Ideas

In contrast to management fashion theory, I develop an alternative theory of organizations’ handling of management ideas. Drawn from a virus metaphor, it offers a more complex and sophisticated concept of organizational idea-handling processes and outcomes than does fashion theory. Thus, reframing the phenomenon with a virus-inspired theory pushes analysis beyond the adoption-rejection dichotomy and bridges observations which, viewed from the fashion perspective, are either overlooked or may be interpreted as inconsistent.