Organizational Routines

The idea of routines has been one of the most productive in organization studies. Finally we have a broad, deep, and authoritative survey of the exciting research it has inspired. Paul S. Adler, University of Southern California, US This cutting-edge, multidisciplinary Handbook comprises specially commissioned contributions surveying state-of-the-art research on the concept of organizational routines. An authoritative overview of the concept of organizational routines and its contributions to our understanding of organizations is presented. To identify those contributions, the role of organizational routines in such processes as organizational learning, performance feedback, and organizational memory is discussed. To identify how the concept can contribute to different disciplinary fields, the expert authors review applications across a range of fields including political science, sociology, and accounting. Two chapters on research methods provide expert advice on the endeavour of experimental studies and empirical field studies of organizational routines. Overall, this Handbook contains articles that identify the role of organizational routines in processes underlying the stability and change of organizations, show how the concept has been applied in different disciplinary fields, and discuss methods for carrying out empirical research using the organizational routines concept. Because of the importance issues such as the stability and change of organizations have in organization theory and strategy, this Handbook will appeal to scholars and students in business and management, in particular in organization theory, organization behaviour, and strategic management.

One of the major challenges facing organization studies has been for a long time to develop an operational content to the notion of routines . This book offers important advances in this direction, both conceptually and through illuminating case studies. Giovanni Dosi, Sant Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy This book showcases advanced empirical research that applies the concept of organizational routines to understanding organizations and how they change and evolve. The contributions gathered in the book cover qualitative, quantitative, and archival methods for empirical research applying the concept of organizational routines. Specific issues highlighted include the use of event-sequence methods in the analysis of organizational routines, the impact of standard operating procedures on recurrent behaviour patterns, and the stability, resilience, and change of organizational routines. The book thus provides an overview of different empirical methods applied to study organizational routines, and of their prerequisites, analytical power, and contribution. This comprehensive book will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of organization theory, strategy, and organization behaviour. Researchers in organization, management and economic science, organizational change and evolutionary theories will also find this book invaluable.

Over the past 15 years, organizational routines have been increasingly investigated from a process perspective to challenge the idea that routines are stable entities that are mindlessly enacted. A process perspective explores how routines are performed by specific people in specific settings. It shows how action, improvisation, and novelty are part of routine performances. It also departs from a view of routines as "black boxes" that transform inputs into organizational outputs and places attention on the actual actions and patterns that comprise routines. Routines are both effortful accomplishments, in that it takes effort to perform, sustain, or change them, and emergent accomplishments, because sometimes the effort to perform routines leads to unforeseen change. While a process perspective has enabled scholars to open up the 'black box' of routines and explore their actions and patterns in fine-grained, dynamic ways, there is much more work to be done. Chapters in this volume make considerable progress, through the three main themes expressed across these chapters. These are: Zooming out to understand routines in larger contexts; Zooming in to reveal actor dispositions and skill; and Innovation, creativity and routines in ambiguous contexts.

Using an experimental approach, Maximilian Eberl evaluates the role of implicit learning (CBM/AAT) for the modification of organizational routines. Taking a vertical perspective on the (collective) entities in organizations shows an increasing role of impulsive processes the lower the level gets. The horizontal perspective demonstrates the potential of implicit learning for the replication of routines. Finally, the time perspective highlights the contributions of implicit learning strategies for change in and of routines, as well as the contributions of implicit learning to deal with the path-dependence of routines.

This volume seeks to explore how process theorizing can advance understanding of organizational routines. It reviews the main approaches to routines, and presents new thinking and research.

A comprehensive introduction and overview of research in Routine Dynamics written by the central researchers in the field.

Organizational change and innovation are central and enduring issues in management theory and practice. Dramatic changes in population demographics, technology, competitive survival, and social, economic, and environmental health and sustainability concerns means the need to understand how organizations repond to these shifts through change and innovation has never been greater. Why and what organizations change is generally well known; how organizations change is therefore the central focus of this Handbook. It focuses on processes of change — or the sequence of events in which organizational characteristics and activities change and develop over time — and the factors that influence these processes, with the organization as the central unit of analysis. Across the diverse and wide-ranging contributions, three central questions evolve: what is the nature of change and process?; what are the key concepts and models for understanding organization change and innovation?; and how should we study change and innovation? This Handbook presents critical evolving scholarship from leading experts across a range of disciplines, and explores its implications for future research and practice.

Co-published by Routledge for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Educational policy continues to be of major concern. Policy debates about economic growth and national competitiveness, for example, commonly focus on the importance of human capital and a highly educated workforce. Defining the theoretical boundaries and methodological approaches of education policy research are the two primary themes of this comprehensive, AERA-sponsored Handbook. Organized into seven sections, the Handbook focuses on (1) disciplinary foundations of educational policy, (2) methodological perspectives, (3) the policy process, (4) resources, management, and organization, (5) teaching and learning policy, (6) actors and institutions, and (7) education access and differentiation. Drawing from multiple disciplines, the Handbook’s over one hundred authors address three central questions: What policy issues and questions have oriented current policy research? What research strategies and methods have proven most fruitful? And what issues, questions, and methods will drive future policy research? Topics such as early childhood education, school choice, access to higher education, teacher accountability, and testing and measurement cut across the 63 chapters in the volume. The politics surrounding these and other issues are objectively analyzed by authors and commentators. Each of the seven sections concludes with two commentaries by leading scholars in the field. The first considers the current state of policy design, and the second addresses the current state of policy research. This book is appropriate for scholars and graduate students working in the field of education policy and for the growing number of academic, government, and think-tank researchers engaged in policy research. For more information on the American Educational Research Association, please visit: http://www.aera.net/.