I reread some of David’s entries on the M3T-blog today, and it struck me that I never wrote anything about fashion and management on this blog. The word “fashion” is probably first associated with the clothing industry for most people. Fashion does affect basically everything in our lives, though; from what we wear and how we decorate our interiors to what we eat and which words we use when we speak to our friends. We change how we act after certain trends and norms that arise, and this behavior has an impact on most of our everyday life decisions.

 

Fashion in general is extremely difficult to understand. We tend to care about being fashionable to a great extent, even though it costs us a lot of money and despite the fact that it in reality is a superficial and redundant business. I will not try to discuss why we do care so much – but I do know that if I would stop caring about fashion, I would definitely have some money left in my pocket each month. My point is that when it comes to following trends, people are willing to pay a lot of money for it. Fashion is, despite its somewhat meaningless features, an industry with an enormous amount of power and financial assets. Perhaps more importantly, fashion has a strange ability; it can make us do things we were not prepared to do some time ago. For management corporations, the situation is exactly the same as for conventional fashion companies; trends within the management business may result in huge financial profits from for example a well written book, and it might help implementing large changes in how people think. The latter fact may result in even larger financial profits on a long-term basis – the only problem is to be the first company to realize these new trends and to market them appropriately. Therefore, I believe that the steady stream of new management books, magazines, lectures and movies which present new “revolutionary” ways of acting and thinking, is completely logical and that the business will keep on developing as long as the demand still exists. The person or company that succeeds in delivering the next large trend will benefit from it, just as within the traditional clothing industry.

 

I would also like to say a few words about the so called management gurus. I have seen clips from a few of their lectures and read some of their texts, and I must say that many of them tend to discuss the same issues and emphasize the same trends, although they use their own words to describe these matters. I am still not sure whether the trends set by management gurus really can bring any radical changes into organizations or not, but most of them are certainly charismatic and interesting to read and listen to, which in fact is enough to make people pay for their products.

 

/Sofia