IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v9y2020i5p69-d354370.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Evolutionary Trajectory of the Agile Concept Viewed from a Management Fashion Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Dag Øivind Madsen

    (Department of Business, Marketing and Law, School of Business, University of South-Eastern Norway, Bredalsveien 14, 3511 Hønefoss, Norway)

Abstract

Agile is one of the most popular contemporary management concepts and buzzwords. This paper provides an in-depth examination of the influence of the Agile concept on the discourse, thinking and practices of organizations worldwide. The paper traces the emergence and evolution of the Agile concept from inception to the present by synthesizing findings from a wide range of academic and practitioner-oriented sources. Overall, the picture that emerges from the analysis is that the Agile concept has grown considerably in popularity and has become one of the most dominant concepts in public management discourse. The popularization of Agile has, to a large extent, been driven by an active supply-side made up of actors such as consultants, coaches, and trainers. Another finding is that the Agile concept has evolved considerably over time, from its initial presentation as a narrow and specialized concept rooted in the software development community to a much broader and general approach applicable across nearly all types of organizations and industries. The broadening of the concept has led to neologisms such as Agile Marketing, Agile Government, and Agile Management. The paper ends with reflections on the current status of Agile and some speculation about the concept’s likely future trajectory.

Suggested Citation

  • Dag Øivind Madsen, 2020. "The Evolutionary Trajectory of the Agile Concept Viewed from a Management Fashion Perspective," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-22, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:9:y:2020:i:5:p:69-:d:354370
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/5/69/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/5/69/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yusuf, Y. Y. & Sarhadi, M. & Gunasekaran, A., 1999. "Agile manufacturing:: The drivers, concepts and attributes," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1-2), pages 33-43, May.
    2. Hyunyoung Choi & Hal Varian, 2012. "Predicting the Present with Google Trends," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 88(s1), pages 2-9, June.
    3. Jung, Dong-II & Lee, Won-Hee, 2016. "Crossing the management fashion border: The adoption of business process reengineering services by management consultants offering total quality management services in the United States, 1992–2004," Journal of Management & Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(5), pages 702-719, September.
    4. Dag Øivind Madsen, 2014. "How do managers encounter fashionable management concepts? A study of balanced scorecard adopters in Scandinavia," International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(4), pages 249-267.
    5. John R. Graham & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2012. "Managerial Attributes and Executive Compensation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(1), pages 144-186.
    6. Jos Benders & Jurriaan Nijholt & Stefan Heusinkveld, 2007. "Using Print Media Indicators in Management Fashion Research," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 41(6), pages 815-829, December.
    7. Briers, Michael & Chua, Wai Fong, 2001. "The role of actor-networks and boundary objects in management accounting change: a field study of an implementation of activity-based costing," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 237-269, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tutar Hasan & Sarkhanov Teymur, 2022. "Tracing Management Fashions in Selected Indices: A Descriptive Statistical Study," Organizacija, Sciendo, vol. 55(3), pages 199-213, August.
    2. Dag Øivind Madsen & Kåre Slåtten, 2022. "The Possibilities and Limitations of Using Google Books Ngram Viewer in Research on Management Fashions," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-12, November.
    3. Bulent Akkaya & Anna Bagieńska, 2022. "The Role of Agile Women Leadership in Achieving Team Effectiveness through Interpersonal Trust for Business Agility," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-16, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dag Øivind Madsen, 2016. "Using Google Trends in Management Fashion Research: A Short Note," Working Papers hal-01343880, HAL.
    2. Dag Øivind Madsen & Tonny Stenheim, 2016. "Big Data viewed through the lens of management fashion theory," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1165072-116, December.
    3. Dag Øivind Madsen, 2016. "SWOT Analysis: A Management Fashion Perspective," Post-Print hal-01306102, HAL.
    4. Dag Øivind Madsen, 2019. "The Emergence and Rise of Industry 4.0 Viewed through the Lens of Management Fashion Theory," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-25, September.
    5. Dag Øivind Madsen, 2020. "Have the Reports of TQM’s Death Been Greatly Exaggerated? A Re-Examination of the Concept’s Historical Popularity Trajectory," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-25, May.
    6. Dag Øivind Madsen & Daniel Johanson, 2016. "Examining customer relationship management from a management fashion perspective," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 1161285-116, December.
    7. Dag Øivind Madsen & Kåre Slåtten, 2015. "Social media and management fashions," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1122256-112, December.
    8. Mioara, POPESCU, 2015. "Construction Of Economic Indicators Using Internet Searches," Annals of Spiru Haret University, Economic Series, Universitatea Spiru Haret, vol. 6(1), pages 25-31.
    9. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    10. Tommaso Colussi & Ingo E. Isphording & Nico Pestel, 2021. "Minority Salience and Political Extremism," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 237-271, July.
    11. Kučerová, Zuzana & Pakši, Daniel & Koňařík, Vojtěch, 2024. "Macroeconomic fundamentals and attention: What drives european consumers’ inflation expectations?," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 48(1).
    12. David W Carter & Scott Crosson & Christopher Liese, 2015. "Nowcasting Intraseasonal Recreational Fishing Harvest with Internet Search Volume," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-18, September.
    13. David H Chae & Sean Clouston & Mark L Hatzenbuehler & Michael R Kramer & Hannah L F Cooper & Sacoby M Wilson & Seth I Stephens-Davidowitz & Robert S Gold & Bruce G Link, 2015. "Association between an Internet-Based Measure of Area Racism and Black Mortality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-12, April.
    14. C. Douglas Swearingen & Joseph T. Ripberger, 2014. "Google Insights and U.S. Senate Elections: Does Search Traffic Provide a Valid Measure of Public Attention to Political Candidates?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(3), pages 882-893, September.
    15. Nathan, Max & Rosso, Anna, 2014. "Mapping information economy businesses with big data: findings from the UK," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60615, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Ishani Chaudhuri & Parthajit Kayal, 2022. "Predicting Power of Ticker Search Volume in Indian Stock Market," Working Papers 2022-214, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    17. King, Timothy & Srivastav, Abhishek & Williams, Jonathan, 2016. "What's in an education? Implications of CEO education for bank performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 287-308.
    18. Yang, Xin & Pan, Bing & Evans, James A. & Lv, Benfu, 2015. "Forecasting Chinese tourist volume with search engine data," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 386-397.
    19. Sansone, Dario, 2019. "Pink work: Same-sex marriage, employment and discrimination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    20. Laurent Lavigne, 2021. "Le contrôleur de gestion communal dans le prisme instrumental vers un rôle organisationnel hybride ?," Post-Print hal-03361474, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:9:y:2020:i:5:p:69-:d:354370. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.