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In this paper, we challenge the traditional understanding of organizational routines as creating inertia in organizations. We adapt Latour's distinction between ostensive and performative to build a theory that explains why routines are a source of change as well as stability. The ostensive aspect of a routine embodies what we typically think of as the structure. The performative aspect embodies the specific actions, by specific people, at specific times and places, that bring the routine to life. We argue that the ostensive aspect enables people to guide, account for, and refer to specific performances of a routine, and the performative aspect creates, maintains, and modifies the ostensive aspect of the routine. We argue that the relationship between ostensive and performative aspects of routines creates an on-going opportunity for variation, selection, and retention of new practices and patterns of action within routines and allows routines to generate a wide range of outcomes, from apparent stability to considerable change. This revised ontology of organizational routines provides a better explanation of empirical findings than existing theories of routines and has implications for a wide range of organizational theories.

The authors wish to thank Stephen Barley, Michael Cohen, Connie Gersick, Barbara Lawrence, Lance Sandelands, Robert Sutton, Burt Swanson, Karl Weick, Elaine Yakura, and the anonymous ASO reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We would also like to thank Linda Pike for her editorial advice, and Louise Soe and Sidne Ward for their help with the data analysis. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Management Meeting, Las Vegas, August 1992. This paper explores the sequential structure of work processes in a task unit whose work involves high numbers of exceptions, low analyzability of search, frequent interruptions, and extensive deliberation and that cannot be characterized as routine under any traditional definition. Yet a detailed analysis of the sequential pattern of action in a sample of 168 service interactions reveals that most interactions follow a repetitive, functionally similar pattern. This apparent contradiction presents a challenge to our theoretical understanding of routines: How can apparently nonroutine work display such a high degree of regularity? To answer this question, we propose a new definition of organizational routines as a set of functionally similar patterns and illustrate a new methodology for studying the sequential structure of work processes using rule-based grammatical models. This approach to organizational routines juxtaposes the structural features of the organization against the reflective agency of organizational members. Members enact specific performances from among a constrained, but potentially large set of possibilities that can be described by a grammar, giving rise to the regular patterns of action we label routines.'

Brian T. Pentland, University of California, Los Angeles This paper introduces the concept of the "move" as a unit of analysis in technical service interactions and uses it as the basis for a theory of organizational knowledge. Data from six months of participant observation at two software support hot lines were analyzed inductively to identify a core set of moves with which technical support specialists respond to customer calls. When a specialist cannot respond to a call alone, he or she has to get help from others or give the call away. The moves specialists use in these situations both reflect and enact the structure of the organization: transferring a call reflects division of labor, escalating a call reflects hierarchy, and so on. By allowing the technical support staff to accomplish work collectively they could not do individually, organizing moves embody the distinctively organizational aspect of the collective performance. If we adopt a pragmatic definition of knowledge as situated performance rather than abstract representation, then organizing moves are a logical foundation for a theory of organizational knowledge.'