As agencies and consultants rush to establish their online bona fides and publicize their new social media practices, some cautionary words about the behaviour that undermined previous management fads - and the consultancies that tried to capitalize upon them. A study of the 1990s hype behind TQM reveals that inexperienced and bombastic consultants drove experimentation and implementation in the field, but eventually abandoned the specialty, to be replaced by the technical and management experts that had originally championed the idea.

Fifteen years ago, these management fad “fashion surfers” wore power suits, sometimes had a preference for tasselled loafers, carried a Filofax and had never heard of flavoured vodka. They can’t be as easily identified nowadays. Maybe t-shirts from Threadless under the Banana Republic shirts? Suits from H&M? Two MacBooks (white and black) in their carry-on?

What’s certain is that a basic knowledge of design, information management and CSS has never before been leveraged as quickly and as widely. And with as much targeted online promotional copy. In 1995, the competence of your team was demonstrated by the sales of your business book. Today, by the size of your download. (A hint: the more pictures and graphs, the better)

Coverage today in the WSJ, but more details are available from the Academy of Management news release.

” … As a new management approach gains in popularity, large numbers of generalist consultants, expert at recognizing burgeoning opportunities, jump in to advise firms on implementing the new method, even though these generalists may have little knowledge of its intricacies.

This influx of “fashion surfers,” as one scholar called them, produces many program failures, and the practice that not long before was widely viewed as a virtual panacea gets a bad name. This in turn results in diminished demand, and consultation about the practice becomes mainly the province of experts and specialists, much as it was before the boom set in.

In the words of the study’s authors, Robert J. David of McGill University and David Strang of Cornell University, “These supply-side dynamics…help explain why fashion booms are so fragile.” They also “suggest that fashionable practices can return to their technical roots once the hype is over.” (AOM news release)

There’s the rub for actual bloggers, podcasters and online innovators: if you continue to build expertise in the field, your practice will likely survive.

Original pointer from Business Innovation Insider.

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