Chapter 7 The Role of Multiple Points of View in Non-envisioned Routine Creation: Taking Initiative, Creating Connections, and Coping with Misalignments

Abstract

Large corporate policy changes usually take the form of a top-down approach based on a clearly envisioned routine and an implementation plan. Yet, the authors report on a study of a bottom-up approach in which key members of a service company created a new hiring routine that supported a companywide new human resource management (HRM) hiring policy without any prior envisioned plan. We pay particularly close attention to the perspectives of this company's HRM professionals, line managers, and middle-level managers. The authors used the literature on routine dynamics to examine in detail which actions were taken by key members in this organization to create the new hiring routine. Through in-depth interviews, the authors found that line managers, HRM professionals, and middle-level managers significantly differed in their points of view regarding their role in the new hiring routine, and how it should work best. As a result of these different points of view, the actors took different routine Dynamics in Action: replication and transformation research in the sociology of Organizations, Volume 61, 153-172

Introduction: Routine Dynamics in Action

“…Taken together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate how important themes of routine dynamics play out in different empirical contexts. More importantly, they show how routine dynamics is a useful lens to increase our understanding of important real-world (sometimes counterintuitive) phenomena, such as why innocent women may become sex workers (Eberhard et al, 2019), how bottom-up approaches to creating new routines can far surpass the initial goals of management (van Mierlo et al, 2019) or how replicating routines can promote and foster innovation in new venture creation (Schmidt et al, 2019). Many avenues remain for engaging routine dynamics in advancing our understanding of new and changing empirical phenomena.…”

“…Routine dynamics offers methodological sensitivities (e.g., a focus on actions) and theoretical tools (e.g., practice theory) that prove useful in exploring a wide range of organizational phenomena. The papers in this volume build on this tradition and show how routine dynamics can illuminate areas such as strategy (Grand & Bartel, 2019), entrepreneurship (Schmidt, Braun, & Sydow, 2019), human resources (van Mierlo, Bondarouk, & Loohuis, 2019), health care (Kho, Spee, & Gillespie, 2019;Kiwan & Lazaric, 2019), social policy (Eberhard, Frost, & Rerup, 2019) and the arts (Blanche & Cohendet, 2019). This volume highlights four themes that are important in analyzing and theorizing routine dynamics and that help us think about the empirical phenomenon we care about.…”

Implications of self-managing teams for the HRM function

“…Without a clear plan or guidelines, several organisational actors (e.g. HRM professionals, managers, and FLMs) created their own new hiring routines (Van Mierlo et al , forthcoming). The FLMs in our case study experienced trouble with the ambiguous expectations regarding their role in the implementation process of the new HRM philosophy.…”

Movimentos estratégicos das Instituições de Ensino Superior: desafios digitais impostos pela pandemia da covid-19

“…A mudança do ensino presencial para o ERE fez com que os atores envolvidos nas rotinas empreendessem novas ações, levando os gestores das IES a novos movimentos estratégicos, pois as estratégias estabelecidas foram desconstruídas, e consequentemente, as tarefas das rotinas de ensino e de coordenação. Portanto, este artigo fornece percepções empíricas sobre a maneira de como as rotinas organizacionais podem ser desenvolvidas sem um padrão de ação previsto (Van Mierlo et al, 2019).…”