The late 1960s and 1970s ushered in what Scott (2004,
p. 5) called a “frenzy of theorizing.” Most of our contemporary
theories of organization were created in this
period. Given that today’s senior faculty members were
in graduate school during that time, and given that we
generally train our students in our image, few scholars
active today know a world without contingency theory,
population ecology theory, resource dependence theory,
transaction cost theory, and all the rest. Most of us do
not stop to think about why these ideas appeared at that
time, and more to the point, to consider why they no
longer command our attention as they once did.