Management fashion as proto-professionalisation: the case of Knowledge Management

The article argues that management fashions can be interpreted as processes of emerging professionalisation around particular bodies of management expertise. By integrating insights from research on professions and professionalisation, management fashions are analysed as attempts by specific groups within organisations to establish themselves as professionals within specific niches of organisational intervention and practice. This process is supported by corresponding developments in the environment of the organisations that help legitimate the newly emerging expertise. This view accounts for the social-integrative dimension of management