Management Fads in Higher Education: Where They Come From, What They Do, Why They Fail (review)

Robert Birnbaum's Management Fads in Higher Education describes the history of management fads over the past 40 years (e.g., restructuring, total quality management, etc.) and analyzes where fads come from and why they often fail, develops a model of how fads occur, analyzes the costs and benefits of fads, and provides academic managers with guidance for evaluating fads and whether they should adopt them. A review of the literature on innovations provides a broader context because, as Birnbaum states, very little empirical research has been done on management fads.

His preface contains important assumptions about his perspective. For example, he notes that he was once a devotee of management fads and that he wants to share his insights as an administrator/faculty. This book is a product of four decades of professional experience, a through review of the literature, and a great deal of personal reflection. Few books can boast the insight that comes from these multiple sources. We also learn that Birnbaum believes that even management approaches such as fads can make a difference. Although the tenor of much of the book is critical, there is an underlying belief that fads are constructive. It is rare to find this level of criticism related to a topic an author truly believes in. The book points out how fads have resulted in massive lay-offs and job stress, thus critiquing the perspective that fads are "fun and games" and "passing fancies." This book has many distinctive and admirable qualities in the care with which it presents its assumptions, its thorough review of several literature bases, its compelling insights and conceptualization, and its careful organization.

The book is organized in three sections. The first defines management fads and reviews seven major fads first used by business or government that were then transferred into higher education. Part 2 uses the seven fads as cases for developing a model that describes the life cycle of management fads: creation, narrative evolution, time lag, and narrative dissolution/dissonance resolution. He suggests that most fads are adopted in rhetoric only, leading to their failure. Drawing on sociological theory, he conjectures about characteristics of the environment and organizational process that lead to the implementation of fads. Birnbaum also engages psychological theory to examine why managers find fads attractive, suggesting the desire for control or escaping boredom as possible motives. This chapter provides some interesting hypotheses about the psyche of managers and might encourage introspection among academic administrators.

Birnbaum's major contributions are systematically demonstrating the failure of management fads, presenting a way to conceptualize the lifecycle of management approaches, and suggesting reasons why management fads have been adopted even though they continuously fail. Although this is an excellent meta-analysis of an enormous body of literature, I had a few issues for readers to consider. The main issue for readers to consider is Birnbaum's conclusion.

Part III reviews a host of costs related to management fads such as loss of employee commitment and oversimplification of problems. A few positive residuals are noted such as recognizing the importance of data or emphasizing alternative values. Birnbaum describes three negative trends that fads have contributed to: weakening colleges as institutions by focusing on instrumentality and managerialism; impairing academic management by focusing too much on rational processes that are usually not successful alone; and eroding the higher education narrative from being a vocation or calling and ideal of liberating education to a narrative of customers, economic goals, and cost-effective management. After reviewing the dire costs/consequences of management fads, the author reaches the conclusion that we must develop ways to constructively engage fads. I reached a very different conclusion: that management fads are more harm than help. Birnbaum had a...