Organizational Routines Research Articles

Organizational Routines and Theorizing in Large-Scale School Improvement—Exploring a Swedish Design

ABSTRACT In many countries, we can see a movement to more large-scale and system-wide approaches to school improvement. The aim of this article is to study and theorize on conditions for school actors’ knowledge building within such large-scale school improvement reforms. Using a Swedish large-scale school improvement program, “Collaboration for the Best School Possible” (CBSP), as a case and the concepts of organizational routines and theorizing as theoretical lenses, we explore questions linked to school improvement design and conditions for school actors’ knowledge building. Internal policy documents from the Swedish National Agency of Education and interviews with responsible officials constitute the empirical material for the study. The results point to a great variation concerning the degree of standardization and formalization of the CBSP design. This implies that some parts of the CBSP process are to a large degree conditional on individuals’ competences, experiences, and attitudes. An important conclusion from the study is that an efficient large-scale school improvement design should contain organizational routines that can reinforce the interplay between the different levels of the school systems, but also create conditions for integrating research to nurture different types of theorizing. Such design will generate conditions for professional knowledge building and educational change.

Shaping nature outcomes in corporate settings.

Transnational companies have substantive impacts on nature: a hallmark of living in the Anthropocene. Understanding these impacts through company provision of information is a precursor to holding them accountable for nature outcomes. The effect of increasing disclosures (of varying quality) is predicated on 'information governance', an approach that uses disclosure requirements to drive company behaviour. However, its efficacy is not guaranteed. We argue that three conditions are required before disclosures have the possibility to shape nature outcomes, namely: (1) radical traceability that links company actions to outcomes in particular settings; (2) developing organizational routines, tools and approaches that translate strategic intent to on-the-ground behaviour; and (3) mobilizing and aligning financial actors with corporate nature ambitions. While disclosure is key to each of these conditions, its limits must be taken into account and it must be nested in governance approaches that shape action, not just reporting. This article is part of the theme issue 'Bringing nature into decision-making'.

Organizational Routines, Complexity and Emerging Properties

The objective of this article is to relate the concepts of routines and emerging properties to understand how organizational processes, characterized by the use of similar routines, produce unforeseen and different results among firms. The analysis starts from the recognition that the organization is a complex structure, constructed of heterogeneous and adaptive parts that present relations of interdependence. Based on the interaction between these parties, it is possible to observe the emergence of behavior routines that are disseminated among other firms, making possible not only the reproduction of the organization, but also the generalization of these patterns for sectors of economic activity.

Development of a multidimensional scale to measure organizational creative capabilities

AbstractAlthough the literature's case and longitudinal studies provide ample evidence of organizational routines that foster creative behaviors, it still lacks an integrative model of organizational creative capabilities (OCCs) and the quantitative evidence to validate such a model. This research is aimed at conceptualizing and developing a reliable and valid scale for OCCs. First, we define the OCC construct's domain by conducting an extensive literature review. We then generate a list of items for the five dimensions of OCCs through a qualitative study involving a group of 24 practitioners (Study 1a) and by surveying nine senior researchers (Study 1b). We refine the OCC scale using a sample of 269 responses collected in France and Canada (Study 2), and we conduct a first‐order confirmatory factor analysis (Study 3). Finally, we perform a second‐order confirmatory analysis (Study 4a) on samples of 220 responses collected mainly in the United States and Europe, generalize our results to a sample of 205 responses, and strengthen the predictive validity (Study 4b). Our results provide significant evidence that OCCs can be conceptualized around five dimensions: internal socialization routines, idea management routines, external openness routines, creative equipment routines, and internal agility routines. Furthermore, the research confirms the scale's good psychometric qualities, thus ensuring that researchers can be confident in the reliability of any future academic research design using the scale. We also validate the OCC scale's predictive validity by verifying that a five‐dimensional reflective scale with 16 indicators has a significant positive effect on the creative outcome. This OCC scale can be used by practitioners to better understand the organizational routines they have to develop in order to strengthen their organization's creativity. It also provides a way for longitudinal studies to observe how OCCs evolve over time.

Teacher Quality Through the Lens of Hiring Routines: Dualistic Preferences, Oxymoronic Conditions and Pragmatic Solutions

ABSTRACT Hiring is an essential managerial task in acquiring qualitative teachers for qualitative outcomes in schools. The process is shaped by a range of different factors – from individual preferences of teacher quality in principals, to contextual and recourse-based factors in wider structural arrangements. Through the concepts of organizational routines and sensemaking, this article explores the interrelated dynamics of these factors in teacher hiring through a case study within the Swedish School-Age Educare. The findings illustrate how hiring routines are constructed through an interplay between dualistic perceptions of quality preferences, constraining or enabling contextual conditions and routine constructions.

Innovation bureaucracy in the higher education management

In recent decades, the Russian education system has been constantly reformed. Its current state and problems cannot be understood without identifying the subject initiating and carrying out these permanent changes. Such a subject is an innovative bureaucracy - a specific type of bureaucracy that serves innovative processes and creates social and organizational routines from them. This bureaucracy managed to make a conveyor of innovations, which often moves in a circle - without beginning or end. The reforms have become pendulum and repeat at certain intervals. The article considers numerous consequences and excesses of the innovative bureaucracy’s dominance in the higher education management, which are determined by this bureaucracy success in replacing the real, socially significant goals of the higher education system with indicators that can be quickly achieved and reported as if for the public good. The harsh administrative pressure of the innovative bureaucracy leads to the constant updating and combination of standards (although not all their content can be standardized), to an increase in reporting (including in electronic, online form) and in teaching load. The lack and ambivalence of goals and the non-stop projects of changes hinder the formation of institutional matrix to meet the contemporary challenges and determine destabilizing processes in the education system. The authors argue that an institutional approach to the higher education management can change the situation, since it focuses not on administrative orders and formal goals but on establishing norms and rules for the education system self-development. Thus, the efficiency of the education system should be evaluated by the society and the state and not by representatives of the innovative bureaucracy, who strive to preserve the innovation conveyor. The principles of post-industrial management should be applied in the higher education system, replacing the bureaucratic approach to the implementation of innovations.

A Resource-Acquisition Perspective: Examining the Effects of Downsizing on Work-Related Relationships and Performance

Today’s corporations increasingly use downsizing as a change strategy to improve organizational performance. Although downsizing and employee networks have garnered attention from both scholars and practitioners, few studies have investigated the influence of downsizing on the temporal dynamics of communication networks among surviving employees or how changes in communication patterns in organizations affect performance. To study how downsizing affects layoff survivors—extending Conservation of Resources theory to longitudinal network and employee-performance data—we examine the impact of downsizing on both the behavioral and structural consequences in an organizational network and test whether temporal changes in network members’ degree centrality predict how employees who survive a downsizing event perform in their jobs. Results indicate that, during the period immediately following a downsizing event, survivors’ new tie-seeking behavior results in gains in degree centrality when compared with degree centrality before the downsizing or after organization routines stabilize. Moreover, survivors with lower pre-downsizing degree centrality achieved greater gains in degree centrality than those with higher degree centrality. We find that substantial gains in degree centrality are positively related to post-downsizing performance. Efforts to regain degree centrality are abandoned during the stabilization period, and changes in degree centrality are no longer positively related to post-downsizing performance. Our results demonstrate that dynamic changes in degree centrality during disruption and stabilization periods following a downsizing event have differential effects on work-related relationships and performance. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these results and suggest future research directions.

Implementation of the German CSNAT-I to support family caregivers in palliative home care: Evaluation results

Implementation of the German CSNAT-I to support family caregivers in palliative home care: Evaluation results Abstract. Background: Supporting family carers in palliative home care mostly lacks a systematic approach. In a three-year model project, the Carer Support Needs Assessment Tool Intervention (CSNAT-I), an evidence-based person-centred approach for family caregiver support, was implemented and evaluated in three project regions in North Rhine-Westphalia. Aim: To present the implementation process and factors that impacted on it. Methods: The German CSNAT-I was adapted and subsequently implemented by six hospice services and specialised home palliative care teams with the assistance of champions. The evaluation was based on Normalization Process Theory (NPT) using a mixed methods evaluation design. Results: The German CSNAT-I was used across service boundaries, but routine implementation could not be fully achieved within the relatively short implementation timeframe. Staff members were convinced of the approach's significance, and feedback from family caregivers was generally positive or non-specific. The practice of caregiver support evolved, and the importance of family caregivers received increased attention. Barriers emerged in person-centred communication with family caregivers and within organizational routines. Conclusion: The implementation showed that the person-centred intervention has the potential to enhance caregiver support in the German palliative home care setting. Implementing the CSNAT-I requires a cultural shift within the services.

Evaluating localized conceptions and embedded applications of the Food Waste Hierarchy in luxury hotels

ABSTRACT The Food Waste Hierarchy is a prescriptive framework advocating the use of waste prevention and reuse strategies above less sustainable ones such as recycling, recovery, and disposal. However, its adoption and effective deployment in the tourism and hospitality sector remain questionable. This paper examines hospitality workers’ conceptions and applications of waste hierarchy principles within the context of routine operations to assess the implications of embedded organizational practices for the adoption of optimal approaches. Primary data were collected through documentary analysis, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews at luxury hotels. The data suggest that the Food Waste Hierarchy is not fully understood. Consequently, choices that do not help to maximize environmental benefits are often adopted. Furthermore, various levels of the hierarchy potentially conflict and undermine the implementation of other options. The findings stress that, although the general principles of the waste hierarchy clearly have merits, the application of this framework within tourism and hospitality is likely to be limited by several contextual factors. These factors shape employees’ behaviours and guide organizational routines in hotels that shape the prevention and effective management of food waste.

We are all pattern makers! How a flat ontology connects organizational routines and grand challenges

Adopting a flat ontology, we discuss how phenomena of societal concern are connected to organizational routines. We conceptualize grand challenges as large patterns of actions to overcome the micro-macro divide prevalent in existing research. We introduce spatial, temporal, and agentic relations as three interrelated aspects of scale that are of particular interest and demonstrate how social phenomena may be approached through these relations. Focusing on the situated enactment of routines allows us to identify weakening and strengthening between actors and their actions as important processes that reflect the continuous patterning of grand challenges. We contribute to the literature by highlighting the consequentiality of mundane actions and by questioning the dominant approach to change in research on grand challenges. Our insights offer several practical implications for intervening on grand challenges.

Interdisciplinary Directions for Researching the Effects of Robotic Process Automation and Large Language Models on Business Processes

Rapid technological advancements, especially in artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, and large language models, have significantly transformed information systems and business processes. These shifts are characterized by the automation of tasks, reshaping traditional human-centric operations, and consequently redefining human roles and experiences. This Panel Report builds on a discussion held at the annual Routines.Research.Community workshop in March 2023 in Berlin, Germany. It integrates diverse disciplinary perspectives to offer a comprehensive understanding of process automation. The panel draws on insights into automation tools such as robotic process automation and large language models, human-automation interaction research, and the study of routine dynamics, all vital for grasping the immediate human responses and longitudinal organizational adaptations due to automation. The report highlights the need for future research to focus on user-centric design for task automation, understanding individual differences in automation effects, exploring long-term psycho­logical impact, and developing adaptive tools and training strategies. It also calls for examining AI integration in routine tasks and RPA tools, its influence on organizational routines and culture, and the dynamics in teams with AI-based members to better understand and enhance human-automation collaboration. This interdisciplinary approach is essential for navigating the challenges and opportunities of the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

Leading primary care under the weight of COVID-19: how leadership was enacted in six australian general practices during 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged health care delivery globally, providing unique challenges to primary care. Australia's primary healthcare system (primarily general practices) was integral to the response. COVID-19 tested the ability of primary health care to respond to the greater urgency and magnitude than previous pandemics. Early reflections highlighted the critical role of leaders in helping organisations negotiate the pandemic's consequences. This study explores how general practice leadership was enacted during 2020, highlighting how leadership attributes were implemented to support practice teams. We performed secondary analysis on data from a participatory prospective qualitative case study involving six general practices in Melbourne, Victoria, between April 2020 and February 2021. The initial coding template based on Miller et al.'s relationship-centred model informed a reflexive thematic approach to data re-analysis, focused on leadership. Our interpretation was informed by Crabtree et al.'s leadership model. All practices realigned clinical and organisational routines in the early months of the pandemic - hierarchical leadership styles often allowing rapid early responses. Yet power imbalances and exclusive communication channels at times left practice members feeling isolated. Positive team morale and interdisciplinary teamwork influenced practices' ability to foster emergent leaders. However, emergence of leaders generally represented an inherent 'need' for authoritative figures in the crisis, rather than deliberate fostering of leadership. This study demonstrates the importance of collaborative leadership during crises while highlighting areas for better preparedness. Promoting interdisciplinary communication and implementing formal leadership training in crisis management in the general practice setting is crucial for future pandemics.

Focusing on experts: Expectations of healthcare professionals regarding the use of telemedicine in intensive care units.

Telemedical applications are solutions to challenges in the healthcare system. However, it is unclear what intensive care unit healthcare professionals expect from such solutions. This study investigated the expectations and concerns of nurses and physicians when implementing telemedicine tools in intensive care units (tele-ICU). The study was conducted in intensive care units in 2020 during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. It used a mixed-methods approach targeted at physicians and nurses and involved 14 qualitative interviews and 63 quantitative questionnaires. The qualitative and quantitative data showed that both nurses and physicians were willing to use tele-ICU. Nurses recognised the advantages of real-time access to expertise offered by tele-ICU, but feared this would reduce physicians' on-site patient time. Physicians, in turn, were concerned that they would be expected to be continuously on call. The majority in both groups agreed that any tele-ICU solution must be simple to use and integrate easily into existing organisational structures, networks, and work routines. Additionally, COVID-19 significantly influenced expectations: those who reported having more personal health concerns during the pandemic were more predisposed to favour the use of tele-ICU. Overall, tele-ICU supports better care, but a successful implementation depends on its ease of use and context-sensitive approaches. Effectively integrating tele-ICU solutions into daily clinical routines requires input from nurses and physicians and their involvement in the implementation process from the outset, as well as consideration of existing organisational structures. Such measures will vastly increase the chance of acceptance and successful adoption of telemedical solutions in clinical practice.

Rôle des routines et de leurs artefacts dans l’articulation entre standardisation et flexibilité : proposition d’un cadre conceptuel intégrateur

This article aims to introduce a conceptual framework to account for the interplay between standardization and flexibility within organizational contexts. This framework focuses on this interplay through the perspective of organizational routines and their artifacts. It allows to make connections between various contributions that were so far relatively independent. We stress how the concepts of inscription and affordance are useful to consider how artifacts are intricately woven into the social fabric of their design and usage contexts, without neglecting their material forms.

Workplace tentativity: biophysical environmental impacts on outdoor work

ABSTRACT Drawing from data gathered for two ethnographic case studies within the U.S. Forest Service, we develop the concept of workplace tentativity to describe the ways that the biophysical environment influences organizational workplace routines. We find that outdoor labor, routines, and plans adjust to biophysical change and uncertainty, and we examine the resulting organizational and micro-interactional dynamics when such instances occur. Under conditions of workplace tentativity, employees frame workplace activities as tentative and subject to change with limited notice, impacting daily work plans, organizationally planned activities, the utilization of materials, and preparation for and response to accidents and injuries. Attention to the impact of the biophysical environment on workplace structures, patterns, practices, and norms is essential in an era of climate crisis.

Monitoring checklist for the construction of light-woodframe houses

Light-woodframe emerges as a modern construction solution to compete with the masonry houses, due to similarities in competitive costs and low-trained labor. This informality contributes to troubles and problems, being identified as perceptible challenges for the building planning and management. A good tool to solve these difficulties consists in the use of a standard checklist during construction process activities, avoiding the negligence of necessary steps to complete the building project. This checklist indicates the systemic view of the complete process, acting as a facilitating and standardizing tool for the progress of on-site building works. To meet these demands, the present paper developed and proposed an organizational tool, materialized by a checklist presented in Appendix section of this paper, in order to monitor the construction process of wood-based houses through light-woodframe system. Due to detailed knowledge of each building phase, this user-friendly checklist adds values and offers organization routines for developers and suppliers. Printed checklists exclude the need of electronic devices on site, allowing copies for all workers. On building site, it allows controlling the systematization and progress of activities, providing a comprehensive systemic view of the work.

The International Organization for Migration as a Counterweight to States?

Abstract The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is commonly described as a functional intergovernmental organization (IGO) that performs tasks on behalf of Member States. However, recent changes within IOM suggest its transformation into a hybrid IGO that promotes widely shared norms and social goals. One facet of this transformation aims to constitute IOM as a counterweight to the Member States. Leveraging pressures to adapt to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Global Compact for Migration, IOM sought to increase its authority and autonomy by drafting the Strategic Vision. This article conducts a critical discourse analysis of the Strategic Vision to emphasize how it proclaimed the normative role of IOM; centralized its structure, funding, and organizational routines; and changed the expression of its expert and moral authority. The article demonstrates that functional IGO s do not refer to norms and social goals solely to secure legitimacy.

Impact of network embeddedness on innovation performance: the perspective of organisational routine updating

PurposeNetwork embeddedness has been widely considered in enterprise innovation as an effective means of overcoming resource dilemmas. However, while focussing on acquiring external innovation resources, the existing research often ignores the vital role of internal routine updates. Therefore, this study explores the mechanism by which network embeddedness affects innovation performance of enterprises from the perspective of organisational routine updating.Design/methodology/approachThis paper proposes a theoretical model based on social network theory and organisational routines–immune response theory. A total of 328 pieces of research data on high-tech enterprises in China were collected, and the hypotheses were verified using hierarchical regression analysis.FindingsThe results show that the two forms of network embeddedness – structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness, have a positive effect on enterprise innovation performance and a significant positive effect on organisational routine revision and organisational routine creation. Both organisational routine revision and organisational routine creation positively affect enterprise innovation performance and partially mediate the relationship between network embeddedness and enterprise innovation performance.Originality/valueThis conclusion provides a new perspective on the impact of network embeddedness on enterprise innovation performance and expands the related research on organisational routine updating. This study provides a theoretical reference for high-tech enterprises to improve their competitiveness and innovation performance through network embeddedness and organisational routine updating.

Penal hybridization: State influence and local resistance at a community-based reentry organization

As mass incarceration and supervision decline in the U.S., subtler forms of “invisible punishment” continue to affect individuals with a history of legal system involvement. Increasingly, the state recedes from direct involvement in invisible punishment, instead devolving responsibility—and potentially controlling at a distance—community-based organizations. In the process, punishment in the community is shaped by both the state and various segments of civil society. The present ethnography examines how staffers at a community-based reentry organization are subject to and resistant to state influence, and how this resistance generates new forms of invisible punishment. While state influence directs staffers to provide services focused on altering clients’ internal dispositions, staffers resist state influence by encouraging members to be their own advocates against the penal system. This agonistic process of resistance generates a hybridized form of invisible punishment, commingling the organizational goals and routines of penal state authorities with those of reentry staffers who see advocating against structures of punishment as a core mission. The final, hybridized form of this mode of penalty requires the client not only to look inward to effect dispositional changes, but also to look outward to be an active agent advocating against the exclusionary penal structures affecting them.

Development banks and state-led investments: new research questions

ABSTRACT The aim of the article is to bring in the concept of governance and financial bureaucracies into the discussion on financing of innovation and development. The article refers to national development banks as the example of state-backed investors who make investment decisions in line with policy priorities (to prioritized sectors, technologies and development projects). While building on the examples of public development banks, the article seeks to conceptualize the governance of public strategic investments through the notion of a state-led ‘investment function’. In doing so, the article seeks complementarity of the concepts that derive from economics and innovation literature on one hand and public policy and governance literature on the other hand. This study suggests that the governance of state-led investments can be understood as a combination of financial policies, institutions and organizational routines that translate into capacities of respective public bureaucratic structures to make financing decisions.