The Oxford Handbook of Management Ideas

Management ideas, and their associated applications, have become a prevalent feature of our working lives. While their focus is familiar, such as efficiency, motivation, and improvement, they range from specific notions such as activity-based costing, to broad movements like corporate social responsibility. This Handbook brings together some of the latest research from leading international scholars on how management ideas are produced, promoted, and adapted, and their effects on business and working practices and society at large.

Rather than focusing on specific management ideas, this volume explores their key socio-political contexts and channels of dissemination, and is organized around four core overlapping themes. The first section sets out the research field in general, in terms of both an overall system and of different perspectives and research methods. The second section explores the role of different actors and channels of diffusion, including the consumers and producers of management ideas and 'new' media, as well as traditional players in the management ideas field such as consultancies and business schools. The third section focuses on specific features or dynamics of the management ideas system, such as their adoption, evolution, institutionalisation, and resurgence, while in the final section, critical and new perspectives on management ideas are examined, highlighting specific socio-political contexts and the possibility of alternative ideas and forms of critique.

With a broad range of perspectives represented, this Handbook provides a comprehensive, authoritative, and enduring resource for those studying management, innovation, and organizational change, as well as for those working in the management ideas industry.

Andrew Sturdy, Professor of Management and Organization, University of Bristol,Stefan Heusinkveld, Associate Professor of Management and Organization, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,Trish Reay, Professor of Strategic Management and Organization, University of Alberta,David Strang, Professor of Sociology, Cornell University

Andrew Sturdy is Professor of Management and Organisation at the University of Bristol, UK. Previously, he held posts at Imperial College London and the Universities of Bath, Melbourne and Warwick. His research lies mostly in the field of organisational innovation and the role of management consultancy. His work includes co-authored books such as Beyond Organisational Change (Macmillan), Management Consultancy (Oxford University Press) and Management as Consultancy (Cambridge University Press). He is an associate editor of the Journal of Management Inquiry and a Visiting Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). His latest work explores consultancy in national and transnational public sector contexts, including the UK National Health Service.


Stefan Heusinkveld is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management and Organization, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). His research concentrates on the production and consumption of management ideas with a special interest in studying the role of professions and occupations, management gurus, and the business media. He has published on these topics in several journals such as British Journal of Management and Journal of Management Studies. His work also includes books such as The Management Idea Factory (Routledge), and The Flow of Management Ideas (Cambridge University Press). He is lead coordinator of the EGOS Standing Working Group on 'Management, Occupations and Professions in Social Context'.


Trish Reay is Professor in Strategic Management and Organization at the University of Alberta School of Business in Edmonton, Canada. She also holds a Visiting Distinguished Professor appointment at Warwick Business School. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief at Organization Studies. Her research interests include qualitative research methods, organizational and institutional change, professions, and professional identity. She studies these topics in the context of health care and family firms. Published articles from these research streams appear in Academy of Management Journal, Organization Studies, and Journal of Management Studies.


David Strang is Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. His research has focused on the spread of practices in the business, political, and scientific worlds. He has developed statistical methods for the study of diffusion within an event history framework and agent-based models for the simulation of booms and busts in managerial fashion. Strang is author of Learning by Example: Imitation and Innovation at a Global Bank (Princeton, 2010) and has published in journals such as Academy of Management Journal, American Journal of Sociology and Organization Studies. He has held visiting appointments at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, INSEAD, Oxford, the University of Amsterdam, and Tel Aviv University, and received a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford.