Reading Dewey

Abstract

Abstract This article explores some of the reasons for Dewey's appeal by spelling out several difficulties that have plagued our efforts to understand routine activities and by suggesting how Dewey's point of view might be especially helpful in crafting an effective response to those problems. In recent years a large and varied set of scholars has been investigating what may be called ‘recurring action patterns’. Frequently they have worked with the label ‘routine’, but they have also worked with closely related concepts such as ‘practices’ or ‘collective mind’, or even in apparently distinct subfields such as organizational culture or organizational identity. Work on this topic has deep roots in modern organization theory, going back to ideas about routines in Simon's Administrative Behavior, ‘programs’ in March and Simon's Organizations, and ‘standard operating procedures’ in Cyert and March's A Behavioral Theory of the Firm.