Generating Novelty Through Interdependent Routines: A Process Model of Routine Work

Abstract

W e investigate how multiple actors accomplish interdependent routine performances directed at novel intended outcomes and how this affects routine dynamics over time. We report findings from a longitudinal ethnographic study in an automotive company where actors developed a new business model around information-based services. By analyzing episodes involving interdependent routines, we develop a process model of routine work and dynamics across routines. We identify three types of routine work (flexing, stretching, and inventing) that generate increasingly novel actions and outcomes. Flexed, stretched, and invented performances create emerging consequences for further actions across routines and surface differences between actors that could lead to breakdowns of routine work. Actors respond to such consequences through iterative and cascading episodes of routine work. We discuss how our findings provide new insights in efforts to create variable routine performances and the consequences of interdependence for routine dynamics.

Beyond Routines as Things: Introduction to the Special Issue on Routine Dynamics

“…Sequence is just one feature of the connections that create meaning. Deken et al (2016) show what to some involved in the routine are merely sensible adjustments to others are novel or even highly unusual actions. Understanding the work involved in bringing about change, then, is not simply a matter of charting different perspectives but of respecting that actions, patterns of action, and the materiality engaged in actions and patterns of action change as they are enacted (Sele and Grand 2016).…”

Alliance strategy: context, process, and requirements

“…We focus on the cohesion between value, capability and social narratives. Exploring narratives provides insight on employees' action (Deken et al, 2016), while exploring narratives' cohesion with regard to their content helps to increase understanding of their strategic impact (Garud et al, 2014;Jarzabkowski and Sillince, 2007). There is much research on alliance management and organizational narratives.…”

“…Such narratives may vary depending on the goals of a study. In studies fitting the first approach, narratives provide detailed insight in actors, temporally sequenced actions, outcomes and contextual timespace details, and dynamics of routines (Deken et al, 2016). For the second strategic approach, more abstraction is chosen to understand narratives' strategic impact (Garud et al, 2014;Jarzabkowski and Sillince, 2007).…”

“…Recent work on routines explores action patterns of one organization in relation to another organization, i.e. selection of a partner for cooperation (Deken et al, 2016).…”

“…Contradiction of social narratives occurs when understandings, identity formation and action prove too diverse and unrelated (Finney, 2002;Hardy et al, 2005). For instance, a potential partner may not be interested in a proposal, thereby shortcutting an organizational selection process (Deken et al, 2016). Or pursuing an alliance might take too much coordination effort or jeopardize the social fabric at the organizational level.…”