Popular concepts and the business management press

This article looks at frequency patterns of popular management concepts among scholarly and non-scholarly publication outlets. It analyzes differences in the general frequency patterns and reviews propositions concerning time-lags in the diffusion of management ideas in different media, using publication data for four popular management concepts (Total Quality, Lean, Outsourcing and Re-engineering) over an 18-year period. The analysis reveals differences in the presence and frequency patterns of the concepts studied in different types of publications. The assumption of a general time lag between non-scholarly and scholarly media cannot be sustained. The observed patterns can be related to the working logics of the different type of media as well as to the characteristics of the different concepts studied.