Through a glass darkly: Knots and links in the area of management fashion

This paper offers a critical view of the arena of management fashion setting. Responding to Clark’s (2004) analysis of management fashion, the paper employs a Latourian analysis of inscription and mobilization in an attempt to demonstrate that the management fashion setting arena is both larger and more heterogeneously engineered than hitherto acknowledged. Analysing the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) and its annual best practice awards the paper argues that these awards, which both constitute and applaud best practice depend upon the mobilization and enrolment of a large and heterogeneous collective. In an attempt to explore the operation of this collective the paper attempts to tease out the links and knots, which act to constitute management fashions and to stabilise our understanding of best practice.