This article introduces this special issue on routines. It offers some suggestions as to why the concept of routines is considered central in methodological considerations of capabilities and organizational evolution. The contributors to this special issue propose various analytical tools, and provide some missing pieces from the puzzle related to the prominent role of routines. Issues discussed in the papers include methodological individualism. Routines lie between the individual and the firm levels of analysis because they are enacted by individuals in a social context. It is also suggested that a multilevel research agenda provides a finer-grained analysis because organizational routines are not isolated units but are entangled among the various organizational layers.

Organizational routines coordinate the interactions and use of knowledge within firms. Efficient routines can imply a competitive advantage for a firm, deficient ones a disadvantage. This depends not only on how smoothly the intra-organizational interactions are in fact orchestrated, but also on what goals this orchestration serves: the organizational objectives or the convenience, effort minimization, or other idiosyncratic goals of involved organization members. Since organizational routines represent a case of collective action, the conditions under which organizational routines emerge cannot be neglected. They hinge on cognitive and motivational attitudes of the organization members suggesting an individualistic perspective on organizational routines.

It is argued that routines can be fruitfully conceived of as multilevel mechanisms. The merits of viewing routines as multilevel mechanisms are that it helps in putting together a coherent picture of what routines are, what routines do, and how they do it. In particular, it helps in getting a clearer picture of how skills and routines are ontologically (rather than metaphorically) related to each other. It allows us to see that while routines are generative mechanisms producing recurrent patterns of firm behavior, as multilevel mechanisms they themselves are at the same time recurrent patterns of interaction within firms. Because of its ‘behavioral’ spirit, viewing routines as multilevel mechanisms (rather than as, for example, unobservable dispositions of firms to energize patterns of behavior in firms) greatly facilitates further empirical research on crucial, as yet unresolved issues, such as how stable and robust routines are and to what extent firm behavior is routine.

Existing theories of organizational routines have generally had simplistic and extreme views of artifacts as fully deterministic or largely inconsequential. Artifacts have been treated as either too solid to be avoided, or too flexible to have an effect. This paper endeavours to improve our understanding of the influence of artifacts on routines dynamics by proposing a novel and deeper conceptualization of their mutual relationship. In drawing from recent advances in Routines and STS/Performativity Theory, the paper contributes to advancing our understanding of routines dynamics by bringing artifacts and materiality from the periphery to the very centre of routines and Routines Theory.

In this paper we discuss the origins and emergence of organizational routines and capabilities. We first argue that there are theoretical and endogeneity-related concerns associated with the key antecedents and mechanisms specified by the extant routines and capabilities literature. Specifically, we explicate the behaviorist and empiricist foundations of the organizational routines and capabilities literature and the extant emphasis placed on experience, repetition, and observation as the key antecedents and mechanisms of routines and capabilities. Based on this discussion we highlight several, endogeneity-related concerns, namely: (1) the problem of origins and causation, (2) the problem of extremes, (3) the problem of intentionality, (4) the problem of new knowledge, and (5) the problem of the environment. We introduce the ‘poverty of stimulus’ argument and discuss how an internalist or rationalist, choice-based approach can provide a more fruitful (though preliminary) foundation for understanding organizational behavior and capabilities.

This paper reviews the assessment of the routines and capabilities literature provided by T. Felin and N. J. Foss, ‘The Endogenous Origins of Experience, Routines and Organizational Capabilities: The Poverty of Stimulus’, published by the Journal of Institutional Economics. Although valuable points are raised, the assessment is largely off target because it is fixated on the implausible view that the literature assessed is strongly shaped by the tradition of behavioral psychology (B. F. Skinner and others). At the same time, important portions of the routines and capabilities literature that are highly relevant to the authors’ substantive concerns, and which are plainly inconsistent with the main interpretive claim, are not considered.

This paper offers an alternative to the view of the routines literature provided by T. Felin and N. J. Foss, ‘The Endogenous Origins of Experience, Routines and Organizational Capabilities: The Poverty of Stimulus’, published by the Journal of Institutional Economics. The emphasis here is on practice-based theories of organizational routines that are grounded in close, ethnographic observation of real routines. While this literature may be unfamiliar to some readers, it is relevant here because it specifically contradicts the core assertions made by Felin and Foss. Further, this literature provides a clear theoretical foundation for subsequent research on problems such as stability and change in routines, the nature of capabilities and dynamic capabilities, and complex ecologies of routines.

We examine an aspect of the argument of Teppo Felin and Nicolai Foss (‘The Endogenous Origins of Experience, Routines, and Organizational Capabilities: The Poverty of Stimulus’; 2011) where they reject the claim of Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen (‘Darwinism, Causality and the Social Sciences’; 2004) that habits depend crucially on stimuli from the social environment. We argue that while rightly stressing human agency they also create a false dichotomy between agential and environmental factors in the explanation. Felin and Foss create further confusion by hinting – without adequate clarification – at an untenable notion of human agency as an uncaused cause. We raise several questions of clarification for these authors.