Building and reacting on the most influential article on the topic, namely, `Management Fashion' by Abrahamson (Academy of Management Review 21(1), 1996), we propose that management fashions are best conceptualized as `the production and consumption of temporarily intensive management discourse, and the organizational changes induced by and associated with this discourse'. This conceptualization allows us to take account of `interpretative viability', a certain degree of ambiguity about a fashion `s content, and its consequences for the dynamics involved in the ongoing shaping and reshaping of a concept's connotations. Our arguments are illustrated by drawing on a variety of empirical work on Business Process Reengineering in the Netherlands.

Comments on the quality of working life (QWL) under lean production have varied from devastating criticism on the one hand, to eulogistic praise on the other. These contrasting positions can be related to researchers’ opposing societal stances and resulting interpretations, which are reinforced by the methodologies used and the absence of an external framework to judge QWL. Using Karasek’s job demand–job control model, the authors investigate a Dutch plant operating under a lean production (LP) regime in an attempt to resolve the controversy. The jobs in this plant can be placed in Karasek’s quadrant of low job demands and low job control, which means that antagonists of LP are right in claiming that the work is monotonous and repetitive, while the advocates’ claim that workers have sufficient job decision latitude also holds.

This article draws on a product innovation perspective to explore the process of knowledge commodification. It is argued that key suppliers of management knowledge do not particularly regard this process as unproblematic. Using interviews with management consultants, this study provides an understanding of the internal elements that may inhibit or encourage the development of new knowledge products. Exploratory results reveal several major impediments to linking commodification efforts with the consultancy and suggest the importance of internal legitimation efforts before market launch. The findings indicate the importance of considering the process in which management ideas gain ‘good currency’ within the system of knowledge supply. This has some notable implications for research on knowledge commodification and management fashion.