TITLE

"IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE": FADS, SUCCESS STORIES, AND COMMUNICATION BIAS

AUTHOR(S)

STRANG, DAVID; MACY, MICHAEL W.

PUB. DATE

August 1999

SOURCE

Academy of Management Proceedings & Membership Directory;1999, pF1

SOURCE TYPE

Conference Proceeding

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

The faddishness of the business community is often noted and lamented, but not well comprehended by standard models of innovation and diffusion. We develop a model of innovation adoption and abandonment based on characteristic biases in communication flows. Managers are intelligent and intendedly rational, but they hear much more about successes than failures--until they themselves adopt. Computational modeling of this formulation demonstrates that it generates empirically plausible cascades of adoption even where innovations are entirely worthless. Faddish dynamics are most robust (across alternative treatments of managerial decision-making) where innovations have very slight positive effects on outcomes. These findings may shed some light on the faddism of a business community increasingly marked by media-driven discourse and the consultant industry, and the properties of the many organizational practices that are hot one day and cold the next.

ACCESSION #

27625893

Tags: INNOVATION adoption;  DIFFUSION of innovations -- Research;  KNOWLEDGE transfer (Communication);  COMMUNICATION in organizations;  ORGANIZATIONAL behavior -- Research;  SUCCESS in business -- Research;  INTERORGANIZATIONAL relations;  BUSINESS models;  STRATEGIC planning -- Psychological aspects;  BUSINESS incubators

 

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