Search

This study aims to propose a model to study organizational routines as a generative system based on time and innovation. Routines are intrinsically related to resources orchestration processes, learning, know-how accumulation and organizational expertise. Over time, combined with innovations, in-process, or via technological artifacts, routines may contribute to diversifying the portfolio of outputs able to add value to a company result. The study follows a qualitative approach, with an applied nature, and was made through multiple case studies. Data collection was through semi-structured interviews and was beaconed by protocol subject to peers validation. The main contribution is the model which is proposed to understand routines as a generative system able to diversify the outputs or organizational actions enhancing the results arisen from innovations. Results have confirmed the relation between routines and resources orchestrations process, incorporation and development of innovations, and organizational learning. RESUMO Este artigo visa propor um modelo para estudar rotinas organizacionais como sistemas generativos com base no tempo e na inovação. As rotinas estão intrinsecamente relacionadas ao processo de orquestração de recursos, aprendizagem e acúmulo de know-how e expertise organizacionais. Ao longo do tempo, combinadas com inovações em processo ou via artefatos tecnológicos, rotinas podem contribuir para diversificar o portfólio de outputs capazes de adicionar valor ao resultado de uma empresa. A pesquisa parte de uma abordagem qualitativa, natureza aplicada e foi realizada por meio de estudo de casos múltiplos. A coleta de dados deu-se por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas e foi balizada por protocolo sujeito à validação de face. A principal contribuição consiste no modelo proposto para compreender as rotinas como um sistema generativo capaz de diversificar os outputs da ação organizacional potencializando os resultados advindos de inovações. Os resultados confirmam a relação das rotinas com o processo de orquestração de recursos, incorporação e desenvolvimento de inovações e aprendizagem organizacional.

This study aims to identify the role of routines in the technological learning of the interaction between the Federal University of Santa Catarina and Petrobras. A field research was carried out, through interviews with researchers and director from UFSC and managers from PETROBRAS. The data were transmitted through a content analysis, based on categories linked to the roles of the routines. The creation of routines such as team composition, task division by specialty, periodic group meetings and meetings with the company led to the generation of learning by searching and by interacting, both at the University and in the company.

As digital technologies such as cloud and edge computing, machine learning, advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and the internet of things (IoT) unfold, traditional industries such as telecoms, media, entertainment, and financial services are being reconfigured and new sectors are emerging. In this new competitive landscape we observe new organizational forms and new business models, including the emergence of platforms and multi-sided markets. This emergence has required a strategic response from incumbent firms, including both well-established firms and some first-generation digital enterprises. With these advances in digital technology, the very nature of strategy is changing. Fundamentally, the use of digital technologies may provide new opportunities for efficiency gains, customer intimacy, and innovation. However, without the right mindset for change, appropriate digital routines, and structural changes, digital transformation efforts will fail. We therefore present a framework for strategizing in this new digital competitive landscape that underscores the importance of the interplay between (1) the cognitive barriers faced by managers when trying to understand this new digital world and envision new digital business models, (2) a need to reconfigure and extend digital routines, and (3) new organizational forms that are better equipped to creating value and gaining competitive advantage. From this framework of essential pillars, we derive four journeys of digital transformation for companies that were formed in the pre-digital economy. We also describe the management roles required by top, middle, and frontline managers, depending on whether the digital migration is evolutionary or transformative and whether the firm is responding to or attempting to shape the ecosystem. Although digital transformation is technically all about technology, the more important issue is how companies make their way through this strange new digital world in which they find themselves. Ultimately digital transformation is as much about strategizing as it is about technology.

When people come together as part of a community, oriented towards a collective activity, over an extended period of time, they develop and maintain different routines for the way they are organized, delegate, and carry out their activities. These routines involve a mixture of artifacts and technologies, and are shaped by key common dimensions such as how regulated an activity is, or whether it must follow a particular order. The routines also becomes inherited by new members of the community who use and develop them in their activity. We propose that similar routines, taking place across different communities, with their technologies and dimensions can be expressed and understood as a pattern. We present four patterns as examples that highlight the ways in which communities carry out routines related to organizing and engaging in their joint activity and discuss how such ways of addressing patterns may support the design of new community technologies.

BOOST; International audience; Despite recent calls for processual analysis of routines creation, little work has been done to investigate the entrepreneurial mechanisms that explain the creation and adoption of new routines. This paper provides a processual contribution to the study of organizational routines by proposing a model for routine creation, based on an analysis of collective entrepreneurial actions. Using an entrepreneurial bricolage lens, we show how agents, during the creation of new routines, develop mechanisms to adapt firm processes, enact external constraints and validate novel practices. Our analysis is based on a three-year collaborative study in a French biotechnology firm. We develop a processual model of routine creation comprising three phases: scanning, performing and adopting. The model provides new insights into the interplay between artefacts and entrepreneurial actions in the creation of new routines.

Background One of the main objectives of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is to enhance collaboration among healthcare professionals. However, our knowledge of how EHRs actually affect collaborative practices is limited. This study examines how an EHR facilitates and constrains collaboration in five outpatient clinics. Methods We conducted an embedded case study at five outpatient clinics of a Dutch hospital that had implemented an organization-wide EHR. Data were collected through interviews with representatives of medical specialties, administration, nursing, and management. Documents were analyzed to contextualize these data. We examined the following collaborative affordances of EHRs: (1) portability, (2) co-located access, (3) shared overviews, (4) mutual awareness, (5) messaging, and (6) orchestrating. Results Our findings demonstrate how an EHR will both facilitate and constrain collaboration among specialties and disciplines. Affordances that were inscribed in the system for collaboration purposes were not fully actualized in the hospital because: (a) The EHR helps health professionals coordinate patient care on an informed basis at any time and in any place but only allows asynchronous patient record use. (b) The comprehensive patient file affords joint clinical decision-making based on shared data, but specialty- and discipline-specific user-interfaces constrain mutual understanding of that data. Moreover, not all relevant information can be easily shared across specialties and outside the hospital. (c) The reduced necessity for face-to-face communication saves time but is experienced as hindering collective responsibility for a smooth workflow. (d) The EHR affords registration at the source and registration of activities through orders, but the heightened administrative burden for physicians and the strict authorization rules on inputting data constrain the flexible, multidisciplinary collaboration. (e) While the EHR affords a complete overview, information overload occurs due to the parallel generation of individually owned notes and the high frequency of asynchronous communication through messages of varying clinical priority. Conclusions For the optimal actualization of EHRs’ collaborative affordances in hospitals, coordinated use of these affordances by health professionals is a prerequisite. Such coordinated use requires organizational, technical, and behavioral adaptations. Suggestions for hospital-wide policies to enhance trust in both the EHR and in its coordinated use for effective collaboration are offered.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the role that routines play in achieving sustainable organisational ambidexterity in information technology (IT) firms. Our exploratory analysis of four case studies reveals the key importance of routines in setting the context for sustainable ambidexterity. Companies build up contextual ambidexterity through routines derived from normalization of processes, normalization of skills, and normalization of results. The findings of the study show that routines support IT professionals to decide whether to exploit or explore in each particular case. Firstly, the enabling character of explicit routines as a result of the normalisation of work processes and the freedom that IT professionals have when implementing them, allows IT professionals to balance exploitation and exploration. Secondly, companies build up contextual ambidexterity through normalisation of skills. Hence, IT professionals develop embedded implicit routines as a result of training. Thirdly, the findings of the study reveal how routines are settled through the normalisation of results that orientates performance towards satisfying customer demands, as well as supporting professionals in their efforts to balance between exploitation and exploration which is necessary to achieve sustainable ambidexterity in IT firms.

Purpose: The literature on business models deals with creation and capture of the value obtained through innovation as elements necessary for the continuity of the companies. The concepts inherent in business models demonstrate the operation logics s for the creation of value. To verify how the value creation process occurs, a case study has been carried out based on the change in the business model of Bematech S.A, a Brazilian company from Information Technology (IT) service area. Originality/Value: The theory about business models and dynamic capabilities indicates some connections between these concepts, but this connection lacks practical observation, so the purpose of this article is to understand how innovation occurred in the business model and search, which routines were essential for the value creation in the company ​​Bematech. The phenomenon was observed from the perspective of dynamic capacities. Design/methodology/approach: Based on the reviewed literature, it was decided to conduct in-depth interviews with employees from the strategic planning and IT areas. A graphical representation of the business model was used to capture its structure, the business model canvas. Findings: The results of this study show how dynamic capability and business model connections occur and demonstrate which high-level routines enabled innovations in the Bematech’s business model for value creation and value capture. The study also shows the boundary between dynamic capabilities and the business model.

Those researching organizational capabilities have largely accepted that the most fundamental operational capabilities form a hierarchy ranging from the lower-order dynamic functional to higher-order dynamic learning capabilities. Measurability has advantaged the first two types, resulting in numerous operationalized measurement scales. Yet at the strategic level, higher-order capabilities remain unmeasured, thus perpetuating issues of causal ambiguity. This paper responds by developing and presenting a measurement scale of dynamic learning capabilities (DLCs). Using multiple sources of data, we follow a five-step process to propose to measure and then validate a reliable scale consisting of three subscales. These subscales complement and thus extend the existing exploration and exploitation learning subscales. This predictive validity is further supported by relating all our subscales to perceived performance. Employing this dedicated new scale will enhance both the validity of studies on higher-order dynamic capabilities and the understanding of how firms create and use capabilities to drive performance.

We investigate how resource orchestration influences performance within the ‘knowledge resource management’ approach by exploiting a novel database on the Italian Serie A top-professional football league spanning from the 1960–61 up to the 1991–92 season. We find that the acquisition of experience via newcomers has a U-shaped non-monotonic relationship with performance. Furthermore, we find that releasing co-specialized employees has a positive moderating role within the relationship between team experience and performance by suggesting that dismissing old routines positively influences the relationship between current routines and team's performance.

Purpose Analyzing how and what the local multi-utility AIMAG learned through the 2012 Northern Italy earthquakes, the purpose of this paper is to “normalize” the organizational learning (OL) triggered by disasters. Design/methodology/approach Seven managers who experienced the earthquakes were interviewed. The collected data are supplemented by archival materials. The analysis was conducted based on the 4I model (Crossan et al., 1999), using the qualitative data analysis tool “NVivo.” Findings The earthquakes audited AIMAG’s knowledge repositories, revealing its weakness and strength. When the earthquakes struck, individuals intuited the situations based on their previous experience, interpreting the need to respond to the interruptions and begin recovery immediately. The collective interpretation formed the basis for joint actions, which integrated the group learning at the organizational level. The effective cognition and behavior were instituted to the organization, and the new knowledge was absorbed into the organization’s knowledge repositories awaiting the next audit. Originality/value The concept of “learning through disasters” is advocated. By perceiving disasters as a series of interruptions that may have happened before and may re-occur, the learning is connected to organizations’ past and future through knowledge repositories. In addition, by analyzing data based on the multi-level OL model, the learning triggered by disasters was observed to occur throughout the organization at individual, group and organizational levels, in which routines played a critical linking role.

The author conducted a literature review pertaining to the use of organizational routines, organizational learning, and organizational diversity in an attempt to concisely depict the intersection of these research topics and further expand on these topics’ impact on increasing diversity within higher education institutions (HEIs). A summary of organizational routines defines organizational routines, demonstrates how routines are used within HEIs, and describes how HEIs modify their routines over time in an attempt to improve outcomes. Subsequently, a summary of organizational learning presents an overview of how HEIs learn from their current and past actions, defines single and double loop learning, and elaborates on barriers to learning that may, in fact, stem from attributes of chosen learning techniques. Finally, a summary of organizational diversity elaborates on the myriad of characteristics that should be included within the term “diversity,” describes the dearth of research findings regarding diversity that do not fall within visually noticeable diversity (e.g., skin color, gender), and presents the benefits to productivity that stem from having increased diversity within a HEI. After presenting summaries of the existing literature, the author concludes the review by presenting a list of practical implementations designed to assist HEIs in using routines as a means of improving diversity within HEIs.

We live in a world of inexorable change, where the network of economic, political and social processes that form the social and economic system is continually being redesigned. Not only do the cultural bases of the individuals and the cultures of the organizations change, but the organizations also evolve through modification and innovation of their structures, processes and output, in the attempt to loosen the old restraints while setting new objectives and rewriting the programmes for their achievement. Innovating for change represents the natural approach for dealing with such a dynamic environment made of individuals, social systems and organizations.This paper addresses the endogenous underpinnings of innovation, studying organizational routines as they account for a large share of organizational work and as such provide a relevant source for stability and change.Major stream of literature, while applying a practice perspective, focus on the internal dynamic of one organizational routine. It is argued that routines are conceived as constituted of an ostensive and a performativedimension whose mutual constitutive influence is a source of stability andchange, giving rise to variation (innovation from the inner part) or selective retention of the organizational routine. This paper aims to extend the available existing theory, embracing a typical systemic approach, and proposes that innovation involves accounts for stability and change of an organization, as made of more than the sum of the single organizational internal dynamics of routines.Particularly, the paper develops the idea of systems of organizational interconnected routines in order to explore how the participation of the same actor and/or action in the iteration of more than one organizational routine determines an interconnection, and dynamisms, among the respective organizational routines. The provided analysis reveals that actors inside organizations engage in continuous performance (action) and interpretation of actions. We discuss the propagation of an internal dynamic generated in one organizational routine into the iteration of another, interconnected organizational routine. The results highlight the importance of understanding the interconnection of organizational routines for studying and explaining endogenous sources of innovation in organizations. Overall the paper not only intends to create awareness for the explanatory potential involved in the idea of extending the theory of organizational routines from focusing on one organizational routine to considering whole systems of interconnected organizational routines and particularly the dynamics therein, but also to generate novelty in the field of innovation and change management.

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 17 (6), ISSN:1617-4909, ISSN:1617-4917, ISSN:0949-2054

Functional products (FPs) comprises of integrated hardware, software, and a service support system components that are bundled together to offer higher customer value and possibility to generate revenue. However, offering FPs requires forming and managing win-win collaboration with diverse global value-chain organizations. Based on twenty explorative interviews at two Swedish manufacturing companies, we specifically focus on the collaboration between FP provider and its value-chain delivery organizations. Our result shows that such collaborations can lead to win-lose or lose-win situations. Furthermore, we identify six diverse relational challenges which could negatively influence the collaboration between FP providers and their value-chain delivery organizations.

There seems to be an inherent tension between wiki affordances—open boundaries, unconstrained editing, and transparency—and traditional knowledge management (KM) routines used in firms. The objective of this study is to investigate how users respond to these tensions during adoption of wiki technology at the workplace. The theoretical lens of sociomateriality highlights the manner in which routines and materiality (namely, technology) relate to one another, providing a useful conceptualization for our investigation. In particular, we adopt Leonardi’s theory of human and material imbrication, which stresses the importance of a worker’s past experiences with technology in determining his future adoption decisions. Extending Leonardi’s conceptualization, we suggest that out-of-work experiences are also influential. Namely, we argue that attitudes towards Wikipedia influence one’s response to wiki deployment in the workplace. Using an online survey containing four open-ended questions, we assessed the perceptions of employees towards wiki deployment. Results from our qualitative analysis of 1032 responses reveal five approaches users take in responding to the tensions between wiki affordances and existing KM routines, highlighting the effect of users’ dispositions towards Wikipedia. Our findings inform the sociomateriality literature and shed light on the challenges faced by organizations trying to adopt social media tools.

We provide a critique of the development in organisation studies of the idea of ‘unlearning’ as allegedly imported from the psychology literature by Hedberg and understood to mean the manageable discard of knowledge precedent to and aiding later learning. We re-review the psychology literature and in contrast to Hedberg, find that this definition of unlearning is not empirically warranted. We re-examine a selection of highly cited articles in the organisational literature that claim to have conducted empirical research into the Hedberg model of unlearning. We find none provide evidence of its existence. Typically, under the label ‘unlearning’ evidence is provided of a conventional process of theory-change, the setting aside (not deletion) of an established understanding in favour of new understanding when presented with perceived new facts. In all cases that we examine, clear alternative and less problematic concepts should provide a better conceptual framework for the research, such as learning, theory-change, discard of practice and extinction. It follows that the unlearning literature is not in fact the independent, scholarly and scientific literature that many of its adherents believe it to be. We recommend that for concepts allegedly imported from other disciplines more frequent commissioning of cross-disciplinary reviews may encourage the critical works so obviously lacking in the unlearning literature.

It is twenty years that Lave and Wenger (1991) have presented the notion of Communities of Practice (CoPs). A large number of scholars have extensively studied this concept in a variety of disciplines. However, there have been very few studies of the influence of routines in these communities. The aim of this study is to analyze the notion of routines – as a source of connections - in CoPs in light of the literature on distributed leadership theory. We will focus on one particular feature of distributed form of leadership – the routines – and will apply this element on the knowledge-based learning environment: the CoPs.

Although it is widely acknowledged that the complex health problems of chronically ill and elderly persons require care provision across organisational and professional boundaries, achieving widespread multidisciplinary co-operation in primary care has proven problematic. We developed an explanation for this on the basis of the concepts of routines (patterns of behaviour) and rules, which form a relatively new yet promising perspective for studying co-operation in health-care. We used data about primary care providers situated in the Dutch region of Limburg, a region that, despite high numbers of chronically and elderly persons, has traditionally few healthcare centres and where multidisciplinary co-operation is limited. A qualitative study design was used, in which interviews and documents were the main data sources. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with providers from six primary care professions in the Dutch region of Limburg; relevant documents included co-operation agreements, annual reports and internal memos. To analyse the evidence, several data matrices were developed and all data were structured according to the main concepts under study, i.e. routines and rules. Although more research is needed, our study suggests that the emergence of more extensive multidisciplinary co-operation in primary care is hampered by the organisational rules and regulations prevailing in the sector. By emphasising individual care delivery rather than co-operation, these rules stimulate the perseverance of diversity between the routines by which providers perform their solo care delivery activities, rather than the creation of the amount of compatibility between those routines that is necessary for the current, rather limited shape of multidisciplinary co-operation to expand. Further research should attempt to validate this explanation by utilising a larger research population and systematically operationalising the rules existing in the legal and - more importantly - organisational environment of primary care.

Based on a longitudinal case study in a multinational corporation operating in the medical industry, this paper shows how a group of employees from different sites and from various organisational levels learnt and innovated new training practices as they enacted and made use of organisational routines to develop a global training system that supported the company's overall standardisation process. The paper identifies how, in particular, three interrelated routines appear to trigger moments of recursive learning and employee-driven innovation (EDI) among employees. These routines are: 1) an organisational form of global communities of practice; 2) a 'cookbook' representing a set of guidelines to ensure a common approach to the sharing of best practices; 3) a set of governance procedures to support continual improvements. They do so by allowing employees to: a) collectively engage in and work towards a common purpose; b) identify, document and share knowledge about the problems and solutions they encounter in regard to their work; c) continually improve work practices. The findings contribute to an understanding of how organisational structuring of EDI can be developed and managed, and highlight the importance of deliberately organising routines, spaces and moments to foster such dynamics.