Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8bljj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-23T13:55:05.306Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Materiality and Routine Dynamics

from Part I - Theoretical Resources for Routine Dynamics Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2021

Martha S. Feldman
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
Brian T. Pentland
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Luciana D'Adderio
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Katharina Dittrich
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Claus Rerup
Affiliation:
Frankfurt School of Finance and Management
David Seidl
Affiliation:
University of Zurich
Get access

Summary

This chapter considers how the Routine Dynamics debate around technology, artifacts and materiality has evolved over the course of the past two decades. In reviewing the progress achieved so far, I show how the field is gearing up to address the important challenges posed, among other things, by new forms of artifacts and technology, and new ways of organizing. In so doing, I discuss how the latest advances in routines and materiality (artifacts at the centre, performativity and multiplicity/fluid ontology) can help us address the theoretical, methodological and empirical challenges raised by contemporary material phenomena. I conclude by laying out an agenda for future studies of routines, technology, artifacts and materiality.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akrich, M. (1992). The description of technical objects. In Bijker, W. E. and Law, J., eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 205224.Google Scholar
Aroles, J. and McLean, C. (2016). Rethinking stability and change in the study of organizational routines: Difference and repetition in a newspaper-printing factory. Organization Science, 27(3), 535550.Google Scholar
Austin, J. (1979). Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bapuji, H., Hora, M. and Saeed, A. M. (2012). Intentions, intermediaries, and interaction: Examining the emergence of routines. Journal of Management Studies, 49, 15861607.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bapuji, H., Hora, M., Saeed, A. and Turner, S. F. (2019). How understanding-based redesign influences the pattern of actions and effectiveness of routines. Journal of Management, 45(5), 21322162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Barnes, B. (1982). T.S. Kuhn and Social Science. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bechky, B. A. (2003a). Sharing meaning across occupational communities: The transformation of understanding on a production floor. Organization Science, 14(3), 312330.Google Scholar
Berente, N., Lyytinen, K., Yoo, Y. and King, J. L. (2016). Routines as shock absorbers during organizational transformation: Integration, control, and NASA’s Enterprise Information System. Organization Science, 27(3), 551572.Google Scholar
Berg, M. (1997). Of forms, containers, and the electronic medical record: Some tools for a sociology of the formal. Science, Technology and Human Values, 22(4), 403433.Google Scholar
Berg, M. (1998). The politics of technology: On bringing social theory into technological design. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 23(4), 456490.Google Scholar
Bertels, S., Howard-Grenville, J. and Pek, S. (2016). Cultural molding, shielding, and shoring at Oilco: The role of culture in the integration of routines. Organization Science, 27, 573593.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Birnholtz, J. P., Cohen, M. D. and Hoch, S. V. (2007). Organizational character: On the regeneration of Camp Poplar Grove. Organization Science, 18(2), 315332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanche, C. and Cohendet, P. (2019). Remounting a Ballet in a Different Context: A Complementary Understanding of Routines Transfer Theories. Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 61. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 1130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boe-Lillegraven, S. (2019). Transferring Routines across Multiple Boundaries: A Flexible Approach. Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 61. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 3153.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowker, G. C. and Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. (1996). Learning and communities-of- practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. In Cohen, M. D. and Sproull, L. S., eds., Organizational Learning. London: Sage, pp. 5982.Google Scholar
Bucciarelli, L. L. (1988). Engineering design process. In Dubinskas, F. A., ed., Making Time: Ethnographies of High-Technology Organisations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 92122 (Chapter 3).Google Scholar
Bucher, S. and Langley, A. (2016). The interplay of reflective and experimental spaces in interrupting and reorienting routine dynamics. Organization Science, 27(3), 594613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cacciatori, E. (2012). Resolving conflict in problem-solving: Systems of artefacts in the development of new routines. Journal of Management Studies, 49(8), 15591585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callon, M. (1986). Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen. In Law, J., ed., Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 6783.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (1998). An essay on framing and overflowing: Economic externalities revisited by sociology. In Callon, M., ed., The Laws of the Markets. London: Blackwell, pp. 244269.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (2007). What does it mean to say that economics is performative? In MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F. and Siu, L., eds., Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Callon, M. and Muniesa, F. (2005). Economic markets as calculative collective devices. Organization Studies, 26(8), 12291250.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. D., Burkhart, R., Dosi, G., Egidi, M., Marengo, L., War- glien, M. and Winter, S. (1996). Routines and other recurring patterns of organisations: contemporary research issues. IIASA Working Paper, March 1996.Google Scholar
Cohendet, P. S. and Simon, L. O. (2016). Always playable: Recombining routines for creative efficiency at Ubisoft Montreal’s video game studio. Organization Science, 27(3), 614632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cyert, R. M. and March, J. G. (1963). A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
D’Adderio, L. (2001). Crafting the virtual prototype: How firms integrate knowledge and capabilities across organisational boundaries. Research Policy, 30(9), 14091424.Google Scholar
D’Adderio, L. (2003). Configuring software, reconfiguring memories: The influence of integrated systems on the reproduction of knowledge and routines. Industrial and Corporate Change, 12(2), 321350.Google Scholar
D’Adderio, L. (2008). The performativity of routines: Theorising the influence of artefacts and distributed agencies on routines dynamics. Research Policy, 37fs(5), 769789.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D’Adderio, L. (2011). Artifacts at the centre of routines: Performing the material turn in routines theory. Journal of Institutional Economics, 7(Special Issue 02), 197230.Google Scholar
D’Adderio, L. (2014). The replication dilemma unravelled: How organizations enact multiple goals in routine transfer. Organization Science, 25(5), 13251350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D’Adderio, L. (2017). Performing the Innovation-Replication Dilemma in Routines Transfer. Companion Book on Innovation. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
D’Adderio, L., Glaser, V. and Pollock, N. (2019). Performing theories, transforming organizations: A reply to Marti and Gond. Academy of Management Review, 44(3), 676679.Google Scholar
D’Adderio, L. and Pollock, N. (2014). Performing modularity: Competing rules, performative struggles and the effect of organizational theories on the organization. Organization Studies, 35(12), 18131843.Google Scholar
D’Adderio, L. and Pollock, N. (2020). Making routines the same: Crafting similarity and singularity in routines transfer. Research Policy, 49(8), 104029.Google Scholar
Danner-Schröder, A. and Geiger, D. (2016). Unravelling the motor of patterning work: Toward an understanding of the microlevel dynamics of standardization and flexibility. Organization Science, 27(3), 633658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deken, F., Carlile, P. R., Berends, H. and Lauche, K. (2016). Generating novelty through interdependent routines: A process model of routine work. Organization Science, 27(3), 659677.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Laet, M. and Mol, A. (2000). The Zimbabwe bush pump: Mechanics of a fluid technology. Social Studies of Science, 30(2), 225263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dittrich, K. and Seidl, D. (2018). Emerging intentionality in Routine Dynamics: A pragmatist view. Academy of Management Journal, 61(1), 111138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dourish, P. (2016). Algorithms and their others: Algorithmic culture in context. Big Data & Society, 3(2). doi: 10.1177/2053951716665128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ewenstein, B. and Whyte, J. (2009). Knowledge practices in design: The role of visual representations ‘epistemic objects’. Organization Studies, 30(1), 730.Google Scholar
Feldman, M. S. (2000). Organizational routines as a source of continuous change. Organization Science, 11(6), 611629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, M. S. (2016). Routines as process: Past, present, and future. In Rerup, C. and Howard -Grenville, J., eds., Organizational Routines and Process Organization Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, M. S., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K. and Jarzabkowski, P. (2019). Introduction. Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 61). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 110.Google Scholar
Feldman, M. S. and Orlikowski, W. J. (2011). Theorizing Practice and Practicing theory. Organization Science, 22(5), 12401253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, M. S. and Pentland, B. T. (2003). Reconceptualizing organizational routines as a source of flexibility and change. Administrative Science Quarterly, 48(1), 94118.Google Scholar
Feldman, M. S., Pentland, B. T., D’Adderio, L. and Lazaric, N. (2016). Beyond routines as things: Introduction to the Special Issue on Routine Dynamics. Organization Science, 27(3), 505513.Google Scholar
Glaser, V. L. (2017). Design performances: How organizations inscribe artifacts to change routines. Academy of Management Journal, 60(6), 21262154.Google Scholar
Glaser, V., Pollock, N. and D’Adderio, L. (2021). The Biography of an Algorithm. Working Paper. Organization Theory. doi: 10.1177/26317877211004609.Google Scholar
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3), 481510.Google Scholar
Hales, M. and Tidd, J. (2009). The practice of routines and representations in design and development. Industrial and Corporate Change, 18(4), 551574.Google Scholar
Howard-Grenville, J. A. (2005). The persistence of flexible organizational routines: The role of agency and organizational context. Organization Science, 16(6), 618636.Google Scholar
Hutchby, I. (2001). Technologies, texts and affordances. Sociology, 35(2), 441456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1991). Organizing work by adaptation. Organization Science, 2 (1), 1439.Google Scholar
Introna, L. D. (2007). Towards a Post-Human Intra-Actional Account of Socio- Technical Agency (and Morality). Prepared for the Moral Agency and Technical Artifacts Scientific Workshop, NIAS, Hague, 22.Google Scholar
Jones, M. R. (2013). Untangling sociomateriality. In Carlile, P., Nicolini, D., Langley, D. and Tsoukas, H., eds., How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts and Materiality in Organization Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 197226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kho, J., Spee, A. P. and Gillespie, N. (2019). Enacting relational expertise to change professional routines in technology-mediated service settings. In Feldman, M. S., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K. and Jarzabkowski, P., eds., Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 61). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 191213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiwan, L. and Lazaric, N. (2019). Learning a new ecology of space and looking for new routines: Experimenting robotics in a surgical team. In Feldman, M. S., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K. and Jarzabkowski, P., eds., Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 61). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 191213.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1986). The powers of association. In Law, J., ed., Power, Action and Belief. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1992). Where are the missing masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts, 18, 151180.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Law, J. (1987). Technology, closure and heterogeneous engineering: The case of the Portuguese expansion. In Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P. and Pinch, T. J., eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems, New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Law, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. Psychology Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard-Barton, D. (1988). Implementation as mutual adaptation of technology and organization. Research Policy, 17(5), 251267.Google Scholar
Leonardi, P. M., Bailey, D. E. and Pierce, C. S. (2019). The coevolution of objects and boundaries over time: Materiality, affordances, and boundary salience. Information Systems Research, 30(2), 665686.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, D. (2006). An Engine, not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
March, J. G. and Simon, H. A. (1958). Organizations. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Markus, M. L. and Silver, M. S. (2008). A foundation for the study of IT effects: A new look at DeSanctis and Poole’s concepts of structural features and spirit. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 9(10/11), 609632.Google Scholar
Mol, A. (2002). The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Murray, A., Rhymer, J. and Sirmon, D. G. (2020). Humans and technology: Forms of conjoined agency in organizations. Academy of Management Review.Google Scholar
Nelson, R. R. and Winter, S. G. (1982). An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Newell, A. and Simon, H. A. (1976). Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search. Commun. ACM, 19(3), 113126.Google Scholar
Nicolini, D. (2009). Zooming in and out: Studying practices by switching theoretical lenses and trailing connections. Organization Studies, 30(12), 13911418.Google Scholar
Orlikowski, W. and Scott, S. (2008). Sociomateriality: Challenging the separation of technology, work and organization, The Academy of Management Annals, 2(1), 433474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orr, J. E. (1990). Sharing knowledge, celebrating identity: War stories and community memory in a service culture. In Middleton, D. S. and Edwards, D., eds., Collective Remembering: Memory in Society. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Orr, J. (1996). Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Parmigiani, A. and Howard-Grenville, J. (2011). Routines revisited: Exploring the capabilities and practice perspectives. Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 413453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Feldman, M. S. (2005). Organizational routines as a unit of analysis. Industrial and Corporate Change, 14(5), 793815.Google Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Feldman, M. S. (2008). Designing routines: On the folly of designing artifacts, while hoping for patterns of action. Information and Organization, 18(4), 235250.Google Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Hærem, T. (2015). Organizational routines as patterns of action: Implications for organizational behavior. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 2, 465487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickering, A. (1993). The mangle of practice, agency and emergence in the sociology of science. American Journal of Sociology, 99(3), 559589.Google Scholar
Pickering, A. (1995). The Mangle of Practice, Time, Agency and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schatzki, T. R. (2011). The spaces of practices and large social phenomena. Alexander von Humboldt Lecture Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky Lexington, USA, Monday, September 12th.Google Scholar
Schmidt, T., Braun, T. and Sydow, J. (2019). Copying routines for new venture creation: How replication can support entrepreneurial innovation. In Feldman, M. S., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K. and Jarzabkowski, P., eds., Routine Dynamics in Action: Replication and Transformation (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 61). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 5578.Google Scholar
Sele, K. and Grand, S. (2016). Unpacking the dynamics of ecologies of routines: Mediators and their generative effects in routine interactions. Organization Science, 27(3), 722738.Google Scholar
Simon, H. ([1945], 1976). Administrative Behavior, 3rd ed. Free Press: New York.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1970). The Sciences of the Artificial (1st edition). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sonenshein, S. (2016). Routines and creativity: From dualism to duality. Organization Science, 27(3), 739758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spee, P., Jarzabkowski, P. and Smets, M. (2016). The influence of routine interdependence and skillful accomplishment on the coordination of standardizing and customizing. Organization Science, 27(3), 759781.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Star, S. L. and Griesemer, J. R. (1989). Institutional ecology, translations and boundary objects: Amateurs and professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of vertebrate zoology, 1907–39. Social Studies of Science, 19, 387420.Google Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (1983). Office procedure as practical action: Models of work and system design. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 1(4), 320328.Google Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (1987). Plans and Situated Action: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (2007). Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (2 edition). Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1993). To follow a rule …. In Calhoun, C., LiPuma, E. and Postone, M., eds., Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 4559.Google Scholar
Turner, S. F. and Rindova, V. (2012). A balancing act: How organizations pursue consistency in routine functioning in the face of ongoing change. Organization Science, 23(1), 2446.Google Scholar
Wenzel, M., Danner-Schröder, A. and Spee, A. P. (2020). Dynamic capabilities? Unleashing their dynamics through a practice perspective on organizational routines. Journal of Management Inquiry (online 4 May 2020).Google Scholar
Winter, S. G. (1995). Four Rs of profitability: Rents Resources, Routines and Replication, unpublished working paper IIASA, WP-95-07.Google Scholar
Winter, S. G. and Szulanski, G. (2001). Replication as strategy. Organization Science, 12(6), 730743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (1st edition). New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×