Managerial Fads and Fashions: The Diffusion and Rejection of Innovations

TLDR

Diffusion of innovation literature is dominated by pro‑innovation bias, obscuring how technically inefficient innovations spread and how efficient ones are rejected. The article aims to develop a typology of three under‑explored perspectives and to show how organizational scientists can build more comprehensive diffusion and rejection theories by exploiting tensions between the dominant view and these new perspectives. The authors construct a typology that foregrounds three less‑dominant lenses and propose using the theoretical tensions among them to guide empirical research on diffusion and rejection. Their analysis reveals that mechanisms promoting adoption of efficient innovations can coexist with mechanisms that drive adoption of inefficient ones, underscoring the need for nuanced theoretical frameworks.

Abstract

Reviews indicate that the dominant perspective in the diffusion of innovation literature contains proinnovation biases which suggest that innovations and the diffusion of innovations will benefit adopters. As a result, it is difficult to either address or begin answering the questions: when and how do technically inefficient innovations diffuse? or when and how are technically efficient innovations rejected? This article has two goals: (1) to develop a typology that focuses attention on three less dominant perspectives that can be used to guide research on these questions and (2) to suggest how organizational scientists can develop more encompassing theories of innovation diffusion and rejection by using the theoretical tensions that exist between the dominant perspective and the three perspectives developed in this article. These resolutions are important because they indicate that processes which prompt the adoption of efficient innovations may coexist with processes that prompt the adoption of ineffici...