Dynamics of managerial practices
Management development

Analysis of the spread of managerial practices is based on sociological approaches in terms of isomorphism, i.e. the process that leads one unit of a population to resemble the others.

Why, at any given moment, do companies in the same country, or in the same sector, adopt similar management methods?

Two main factors have been identified by decades of research:

• competitive isomorphism (based on natural selection mechanisms discussed in this paragraph);

• an institutional isomorphism (§ 2