ABSTRACT
Logistic curves were fitted to all 314 cases in the full data set. The citation data employed in this process were discounted by the growth in the number of citations included in the Social Science Citation Index in order to account for the increasing size of the published literature. The three point fit technique thus facilitated analysis of the total influence of a particular published item, and also the length of time over which it is influential. Measurement of these two variables may in turn make possible the identification of fashions in management literature. The selection of data for the three point fit technique is based upon two factors - the position of the first data item (x), and the time periods between the three data items (d). Hence, the first issue that had to be addressed was the selection of which data item should be employed as the first year in the model.
