Concept Of Organizational Routines Research Articles

The Concept of Organizational Routines and Its Potential for Investigating Educational Initiatives in Practice: A Systematic Review of the Literature

This review examines the concept of organizational routines and its potential for investigating educational initiatives in practice. The studies in our review revealed three different approaches to routines: (1) examining organizational routines as entities, (2) (also) examining conversational routines, and (3) examining the internal structure of organizational routines. Current definitions, operationalizations, and examinations can lack clarity and validity. At present, the concept of organizational routines not only holds potential but is also ambiguous. To bolster the potential of the concept, two working definitions of organizational routines are formalized that best allow researchers to investigate initiatives in practice. These working definitions are needed to create clarity regarding the concept and for it to be able to deliver on its promise for providing meaningful and relevant information on how new initiatives actually work and unfold in practice.

Management accounting routines: a framework on their foundations

PurposeRecent research provides useful insights on management accounting routines, yet little is written on their foundations. In particular, factors which may contribute to eventual management accounting routines have not been detailed in terms of the process of routinization. Thus, this paper aims to provide an initial theory-based understanding on the foundation of management accounting routines. In turn, it is hoped that this will raise further research interest on this topic.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on extant literature, a framework on foundations of management accounting routines is developed, and two empirical cases illustrate its operationalization.FindingsThe framework illustrates that a more complete understanding of change to management accounting routines can be gleaned when more is known about their foundations. The foundations are likely to be influenced by a combination and/or interaction of factors at the organizational level, the organizational field level and the economic and political level.Research limitations/implicationsBecause of the so far limited understanding of the foundation of management accounting routines, more research is required. This framework may be useful to guide such research.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of few papers to offer an initial theory-based understanding on the foundations of management accounting routines specifically. This understanding can be built on to improve our knowledge in the management accounting domain of the complex, but ubiquitous, concept of organizational routines.

Organizational routines in the environment of the evolutionary theory

Nelson and Winter (2005) "An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change", as well as important contributions to organizational studies in general, provide the basis for a comprehensive debate about the concept of Organizational Routines. In this review, we highlight the role of the RO concept as one of the foundations of evolutionary theory, whose assumption is that an organization can at any moment incorporate way of doing things and determine what should be done, contrary to the orthodox notions of aptitudes and choices . In the perspective of evolutionary theory, the RO concept appropriates, together with its own stability to a routine, a dynamic dimension necessary for survival in the hostile environment of the market. After presenting some of the fundamentals of the RO concept associated with the work in focus, this review associates the contribution of other studies and authors with the topic to the debate. Finally, a review of recent literature on the subject from the Web of Science source further highlights the timeliness and relevance of the concept in today's business environment.

"Routine Structure and Knowledge Management: Impacts on Routine Attributes, Value and Imitability"

Organizational routines play an important role in a number of theories of organization and strategic management, including evolutionary economics and the capability perspective. While recent ethnographic work has produced rich insights about the roles of structure and agency in the change and stability of routines, the concept of organizational routines has proved difficult to operationalize for comparative empirical work. This has limited the development and testing of new theory regarding how differences between routines serving the same purpose in different organizations may result in different organizational capabilities. Building on prior work conceptualizing routines as (components of) firm capabilities and on the knowledge-based view of the firm, this paper identifies a number of attributes which can be used to characterize organizational routines. I then discuss the relationships between routine attributes, routine value and routine imitability, as well as the moderating role of the environment in which the organization competes. Finally, I consider how a firm's choices regarding routine structure and knowledge management affect routine attributes, and how these relationships are moderated by the broader organizational context. The resulting conceptual framework can be used as a basis for consistent theorization and comparative analysis of routines that operate in a variety of contexts.

THE DNA OF DESIGN WORK: PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL MATERIALITY IN PROJECT-BASED DESIGN ORGANIZATIONS.

The article proposes a framework to address different modalities of virtualization in design work in order to identify patterns of socio-technical variation. A theory of design project virtualization is generated, given the different organizational and environmental dynamics. The concept of organizational routines is used to characterize project-based design organizations in terms of their socio-technical activities' sequences. Elements that make up such sequences are described, including the activities themselves, the actors, their physical and digital tools, and the temporal and special distribution of actors and activities.

Applying organizational routines in understanding organizational change

Organizational routines are considered basic components of organizational behavior and repositories of organizational capabilities (Nelson & Winter, 1982). They do, therefore, hold one of the keys to understanding organizational change. The article focuses on how the concept of organizational routines can be applied in empirical research to understand organizational change. We identify problems encountered in such research and present proposals for how to deal with them, in order to advance our knowledge of routines and our understanding of organizational change. Developing these themes, we also introduce the articles in the special section ‘Towards an Operationalization of the Routines Concept’.