Fast fashion: the rapid layering of management fashions in the Swedish city of Gothenburg

Abstract

By drawing on the institutional theory literature on management fashions paired with the layering literature, this paper shows how a city organization underwent rapid changes over a decade by continuously adopting fashions. This paper is based on a longitudinal study examining a city organization and its endeavours over ten years, including 108 interviews and about 650 hours of observations. The paper shows how layering and fashion drive each other, and that fashion accelerates the layering process. The paper also shows how organizational actors struggled to realize intentions to change while being held back by previous layers and adopted management fashions.