Transaction cost economics (TCE) is one of the leading perspectives in management and organizational studies, yet debate continues regarding its empirical support. In this paper, we take stock of the large body of extant research and provide a systematic assessment of empirical evidence. In all, 308 statistical tests from 63 articles, selected according to a set of clear criteria, were examined across various dimensions. We assess not only the level of empirical support for the theory, but also the degree of paradigm consensus present in the empirical literature. Our analysis shows that results are mixed: while we found support in some areas (e.g., with regard to asset specificity), we also found considerable disagreement on how to operationalize some of TCE's central constructs and propositions, and relatively low levels of empirical support in other core areas (e.g., surrounding uncertainty and performance). We conclude that a more thorough empirical grounding of the theory's foundation is crucial to its future development, and offer several strategies for doing this. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

W e draw on the early history of the management consulting field to build theory about how institutional entrepreneurs legitimate new kinds of organizations in emerging fields. We study the professional form of management consulting organization, which came to dominate other alternatives. Pioneers of this organizational form seized opportunities arising from broad institutional change to discredit the status quo and legitimate their model of how to advise organizations on strategic and operational issues. Similar to institutional entrepreneurs seeking to change mature fields, those in this emerging field engaged in theorization, undertook collective action, and established affiliations with recognized authorities and elites. But unlike institutional entrepreneurs in mature fields, the actors we studied could not leverage logics, positions, or collectivities within their emerging field; instead, they drew on logics from outside their field, sought affiliations with external authorities and elites, and emphasized the benefits of their activities for society at large. Our analysis thus suggests important differences in how actors legitimate novel organizational forms in emerging versus mature fields and underscores the need for theories of institutional entrepreneurship that explicitly account for field context.

We analyze changes over time in the types of consulting firms offering total quality management services. When TQM was a booming management fashion, consultants tended to be generalists with weak links to the technical foundations of the practice; after the fashion went bust, TQM consulting was increasingly populated by specialists with quality control expertise. These results suggest that fashionable practices can return to their technical roots after the hype is over, reversing the usual institutional trajectory. They also help explain why fashion booms are so fragile and how management practices can be sustained once a boom is over.Management fashions are a striking feature of contemporary organizational life. Attention rapidly coalesces around a management practice as a powerful and robust means of achieving competitive success. But as Abrahamson (1996: 257) argued, the collective belief that a practice "leads rational management progress" is relatively transitory. Enthusiasm soon wanes, skepticism mounts, and yesterday's panacea becomes today's run-of-the-mill application. In the language we will use in this article, a "fashion boom" turns into a "fashion bust."These cycles in collective beliefs have important consequences. Fashionable practices consume scarce resources-not just time and money, but leadership opportunities and organizational commitment as well. And when the winds of fashion shift, managers and workers alike may be left jaded, if not embittered, by the experience. Given the significance of fashion swings, it is not surprising that scholarly attention has increasingly turned to investigate their sources and internal dynamics.Two research strategies dominate empirical analysis of management fashions. The first focuses on discourse as a means of understanding fashion origins and trajectories. Barley and Kunda (1992) argued that management discourse oscillates between rational and normative logics. Abrahamson (1996;Abrahamson & Fairchild, 1999) elaborated a model of management fashion that comprises a supply side and a demand side and examined how "fashion setters" and external triggers interact to produce fashion cycles. Kieser (1997) identified the rhetorical characteristics of fashions that promote their diffusion (see also Jackson, 2001). Zbaracki (1998) analyzed how total quality management (TQM) rhetoric is both consumed and produced by managers. Carson, Lanier, Carson, and Guidry (2000) showed that cycles of media attention have increased in amplitude and frequency over the last half century. A second body of research examines the causes and consequences of fashion adoption. For example, Osterman (1994) linked early adoption of TQM and related innovations to corporate strategy, CEO philosophy, and the pressure of international competition. Westphal, Gulati, and Shortell (1997) found evidence for network contagion among hospitals and demonstrated a shift from "customized" to "conforming" applications as TQM became increasingly popular. Staw and Epstein (2000) showed that "bandwagon" adopt...

A lthough there are many potential points of intersection between institutional theory and contemporary studies of entrepreneurship, these have generally remained distinct literatures, with the connections left more implicit than explicit. We argue that there are a number of benefits to explicitly articulating the links between these bodies of scholarship. In this context, we review work that relates to two key questions we believe are especially likely to benefit from the integration of these literatures-namely, how do institutions affect entrepreneurial choices? And how is entrepreneurship related to changes in institutions? We conclude by considering a number of topics for future research suggested by this integration.