Interlocking theorizations: ‘Bundles’ of interdependent management concepts and their local variations

Austrian Science Fund

This project extends our past research on the emergence, diffusion, and translation/adaptation of global management concepts/ideas and/or forms of organizing in two ways: First, we incorporate the observation that various concepts are linked to each other and essentially spread in multiple yet interdependent waves. Such a notion underscores that concepts come in ‘bundles’ and that the history of prior adoptions and translations as well as the relationship to other concepts and reciprocity of concepts, actions, and identities must be taken into account in order to fully understand the relevant dynamics. Second, we go beyond mostly verbal text and include multimodal, in particular visual, manifestations of concepts and bundles. We explore the theorization, diffusion, and translation of such bundles through the combined use of quantitative and qualitative research methods.