How Do Actors Reflect on Unfamiliar Routine Patterns? An Ethnographic Study of Collective Reflection

Abstract

This paper examines how actors engage in collective reflection although actors do not share the same degree of familiarity of the organizational routines on which they reflect. We build on a twelve-month ethnographic study of a high-performance computing organization and examine how two teams that usually performed different routines regularly meet to reflect on and solve problems that occurred in performing their routines. Our analysis identifies four different processes through which certain actors make problems intelligible to others that are not familiar with the routine in which those problems emerged. Our work intends to contribute to routine dynamics research, and more specifically the role of collective reflection, familiarity, and routine ecologies.