Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T09:25:31.148Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Artifacts at the centre of routines: performing the material turn in routines theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2010

LUCIANA D'ADDERIO
LUCIANA D'ADDERIO*
Affiliation:
The University of Edinburgh (UK) and the Advanced Institute of Management (AIM) Research
*
Email: L.D-Adderio@ed.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Existing theories of organizational routines have generally had simplistic and extreme views of artifacts as fully deterministic or largely inconsequential. Artifacts have been treated as either too solid to be avoided, or too flexible to have an effect. This paper endeavours to improve our understanding of the influence of artifacts on routines dynamics by proposing a novel and deeper conceptualization of their mutual relationship. In drawing from recent advances in Routines and STS/Performativity Theory, the paper contributes to advancing our understanding of routines dynamics by bringing artifacts and materiality from the periphery to the very centre of routines and Routines Theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 7 , Special Issue 2: Business Routines , June 2011 , pp. 197 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © The JOIE Foundation 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, P. S. and Obstfeld, D. (2007), ‘The Role of Affect in Creative Projects and Exploratory Search’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 16: 19–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akrich, M. (1992), ‘The De-scription of Technical Objects’, in Bijker, W. E. and Law, J. (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society – Studies in Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Arthur, W. B. (1994), ‘Inductive Reasoning and Bounded Rationality’, The American Economic Review, 84 (2): 406–411.Google Scholar
Bakken, T. and Hernes, T. (2006), ‘Organizing is Both a Verb and Noun: Weick Meets Whitehead’, Organisation Studies, 27 (11): 1599–1616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barley, S. (1986), ‘Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from Observation of CT Scanners and the Social Order of Radiology Departments’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 31: 78–108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barnes, B. (1982), T.S. Kuhn and Social Science, London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, M. C., Lazaric, N., Nelson, R. R., and Winter, S. G. (2005), ‘Applying Organizational Routines in Understanding Organizational Change’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 14 (5): 775–791.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechky, B. A. (2003), ‘Sharing Meaning Across Occupational Communities: The Transformation of Understanding on a Production Floor’, Organization Science, 14 (3): 312–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beunza, D. and Stark, D. (2004), ‘Tools of the Trade: The Sociotechnology of Arbitrage in a Wall Street Trading Room’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 13 (2): 369–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloor, D. (1997), Wittgenstein, Rules and Institutions, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (2005), The Social Structures of the Economy, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bowker, G. C. and Star, S. L. (1999), Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brey, P. (2005), ‘Artefacts as Social Agents’, in Harbers, H. (ed.), Inside the Politics of Technology: Agency and Normativity in the Co-Production of Technology and Society, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 61–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callon, M. (1987), ‘Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis’, in Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., and Pinch, T. (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 83–103.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (1998), ‘An Essay on Framing and Overflowing: Economic Externalities Revisited by Sociology’, in Callon, M. (ed.), The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 244–269.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (2007), ‘What Does It Mean to Say that Economics Is Performative?’, in MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L. (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Callon, M. and Caliskan, C. (2010), ‘Economization, Part 2: A Research Programme 1172 on the Study of Marketization’, Economy and Society, 39 (1): 1–32.Google Scholar
Callon, M. and Muniesa, F. (2005), ‘Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices’, Organisation Studies, 26: 1129–1250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlile, P. (2004), ‘Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge Across Boundaries’, Organization Science, 15 (5): 555–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlile, P. R. (2002), ‘A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries: Boundary Objects in New Product Development’, Organization Science, 13 (4): 442–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, M. (2007), ‘Reading Dewey: Reflections on the Study of Routine’, Organisation Studies, 28: 773–786.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, M. D., Burkhart, R., Dosi, G., Egidi, M., Marengo, L., Warglien, M., and Winter, S. G. (1996), ‘Routines and Other Recurring Patterns of Organisations: Contemporary Research Issues’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 5: 653–698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Adderio, L. (2001), ‘Crafting the Virtual Prototype: How Firms Integrate Knowledge and Capabilities Across Organizational Boundaries’, Research Policy, 30: 1409–1424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Adderio, L. (2003), ‘Configuring Software, Reconfiguring Memories: The Influence of Integrated Systems on the Reproduction of Knowledge and Routines’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 12 (2): 321–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Adderio, L. (2008a), ‘The Performativity of Routines: Theorising the Influence of Artefacts and Distributed Agencies on Routines Dynamics’, Research Policy, 37 (5): 769–789.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Adderio, L. (2008b), ‘The Dependable Transfer of Routines and Capabilities: A Performative View’, Academy of Management (AOM) Meeting, Paper No. 15238, Anaheim, CA.Google Scholar
Dewey, J. (1922), Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology, New York: H. Holt & Company.Google Scholar
Dougherty, D. (1992), ‘Interpretive Barriers to Successful Product Innovation in Large Firms’, Organization Science, 3 (2): 179–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, M. S. (2000), ‘Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change’, Organization Science, 11 (6): 611–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, M. S. (2003), ‘A Performative Perspective on Stability and Change in Organizational Routines’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 12 (4): 727–752.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, M. S. and Pentland, B. T. (2003), ‘Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 48: 94–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraro, F., Pfeffer, J., and Sutton, R. I. (2005), ‘Economics Language and Assumptions: How Theories Can Become Self-Fulfilling’, Academy of Management Review, 30 (1): 8–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, P. (1999), ‘Trading Zone: Coordinating Action and Belief’, in Biagioli, M. (ed.), The Science Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, pp. 137–160.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967), Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1966), ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in Banton, M. (ed.), Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, London: Tavistock Publications, pp. 1–46.Google Scholar
Gibson, J. J. (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1993), New Rules of Sociological Method, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Grint, K. and Woolgar, S. (1992), ‘Computers, Guns, and Roses: What's Social about Being Shot?’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 17 (3): 366–380.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatherly, D., Leung, D., and MacKenzie, D. (2007), ‘The Finitist Accountant’, The University of Edinburgh, April 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holm, P. (2007), ‘Which Way is Up on Callon?’, in MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L. (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1991), ‘Organizing Work by Adaptation’, Organization Science, 2 (1): 14–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1995), Cognition in the Wild, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. and Hazelhurst, B. (1991), ‘Learning in the Cultural Process’, in Langton, C. et al. (eds.), Artificial Life II: Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Reading: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Knorr Cetina, K. (2005), ‘How Are Global Markets Global? The Architecture of a Flow World’, in Knorr Cetina, K. and Preda, A. (eds.), The Sociology of Financial Markets, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 38–61.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1986), ‘Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands’, Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present, 6: 1–40.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1987), Science in Action, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1992), ‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artefacts’, in Bijker, W. E. and Law, J. (eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 225–258.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lave, J. (1988), Cognition in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazaric, N. and Denis, B. (2001), ‘How and Why Routines Change: Some Lessons from the Articulation of Knowledge with ISO 9002’, Economies et Societes, 6 (4): 585–611.Google Scholar
Lynch, M. (1992), ‘Extending Wittgenstein: The Pivotal Move from Epistemology to the Sociology of Science’, in Pickering, A. (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture, Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 215–265.Google Scholar
Leonardi, P. M. and Barley, S. R. (2008), ‘Materiality and Change: Challenges to Building Better Theory about Technology and Organizing’, Information and Organization, 18 (3):159–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D. (2003), ‘An Equation and Its Worlds: Bricolage, Exemplars, Disunity and Performativity in Financial Economics’, Social Studies of Science, 33 (6): 831–868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D. (2005), ‘Is Economics Performative? Option Theory and the Construction of Derivatives Markets’, Presented to the annual meeting of the History of Economics Society, Tacoma, WA, 25 June 2005.Google Scholar
MacKenzie, D. (2006), An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D. (2009), Material Markets: How economic Agents Are Constructed, New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
March, J. and Simon, H. (1958), Organizations, New York, NY: Wiley.Google Scholar
Mol, A. (2002), The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice, Science and Cultural Theory, Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mumford, L. (1964), ‘Authoritarian and Democratic Technics’, Technology and Culture, 5 (1):1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, R. R. and Winter, S. G. (1982), An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Norman, D. A. (1993), Things that Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine, Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.Google Scholar
Orlikowski, W. J. (1992), ‘The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in Organizations’, Organization Science, 3 (3): 398–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlikowski, W. J. (2000), ‘Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations’, Organization Science, 11 (4): 404–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlikowski, W. J. (2002), ‘Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing’, Organization Science, 13 (3): 249–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlikowski, W. J. (2010), ‘The Sociomateriality of Organizational Life: Considering Technology in Management Research’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34: 125–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orlikowski, W. and Iacono, C. (2001), ‘Research Commentary: Desperately Seeking the “IT” in IT Research – A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact’, Information Systems Research, 12 (2): 121–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary Online (3rd edn): http://dictionary.oed.com/Google Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Feldman, M. S. (2005), ‘Organizational Routines as a Unit of Analysis’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 14 (5): 793–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Feldman, M. S. (2008), ‘Designing Routines: On the Folly of Designing Artifacts, while Hoping for Patterns of Action’, Information and Organization, 18 (4): 235–250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Reuter, H. H. (1994), ‘Organizational Routines as Grammars of Action’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 39: 484–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfaffenberger, B. (1992), ‘Technological Dramas’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 17: 282–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickering, A. (1994), After Representation: Science Studies in the Performative Idiom, Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the PSA (2): 413–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinch, T. and Bijker, W. J. (1987), ‘The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts, or How the Sociology of Science and Technology Might Aid Each Other’, in Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., and Pinch, T. (eds.), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 17–49.Google Scholar
Pollock, N. and Cornford, J. (2004), ‘ERP Systems and the University as a “Unique” Organization’, Information Technology and People, 17 (1): 31–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preda, A. (2000), ‘Order with Things? Humans, Artifacts, and the Sociological Problem of Rule-Following’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 30: 269–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preda, A. (2004), ‘Informative Prices, Rational Investors: The Emergence of the Random Walk Hypothesis and the Nineteenth-Century “Science of Financial Investments”’, History of Political Economy, 36 (2): 351–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preda, A. (2007), ‘Where Do Analysts Come From? The Case of Financial Chartism’, in Callon, M., Millo, Y., and Muniesa, F. (eds.), Market Devices, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rafaeli, A. and Pratt, M. G. (2006), ‘Understanding our objective reality’, in Rafaeli, A. and Pratt, M. G. (eds.), Artifacts and Organizations: Beyond Mere Symbolism, Series in Organization and Management, Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schatzki, T. R., Cetina, K. Knorr, and von Savigny, E. (eds.) (2001), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schultz, M. (2008), ‘Staying on Track: A Voyage to the Internal Mechanisms of Routine Reproduction’, in Becker, M. C. (ed.), Handbook of Organizational Routines, Northampton: Edward Elgar, pp. 228–255.Google Scholar
Simon, H. A. (1969), The Sciences of the Artificial, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (1983), ‘Office Procedure as Practical Action: Models of Work and System Design’, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 1 (4): 320–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (1987), Plans and Situated Action: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Szulanski, G. (1996), ‘Exploring Internal Stickiness: Impediments to the Transfer of Best Practice within the Firm’, Strategic Management Journal, 17: 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, C. (1993), ‘To Follow A Rule’, in Schatzki, T. R., Cetina, K. Knorr, and von, E. Savigny (eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Thomas, N. (1991), Entangled Objects, Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Vilnai-Yavetz, I. and Rafaeli, A. (2006), ‘Managing Artifacts to Avoid Artifact Miopia’, in Rafaeli, A. and Pratt, M. G. (eds.), Artifacts and Organizations: Beyond Mere Symbolism, series in Organization and Management, Mahwah, NJ: Routledge.Google Scholar
Winter, S. G. (1995), ‘Four Rs of Profitability: Rents, Resources, Routines, and Replication’, in Montgomery, C. (ed.), Resource-based and Evolutionary Theories of the Firm – Towards a Synthesis, Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 147–178.Google Scholar
Winner, L. (1980), ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’, Daedalus, 109 (1): 121–136.Google Scholar
Winter, S. G. and Szulanski, G. (2001), ‘Replication as Strategy’, Organization Science, 12 (6): 730–743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1967), Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zbarachi, M. J. and Bergen, M. (forthcoming), ‘When Truces Collapse: A Longitudinal Study of Price Adjustment Routines’, Organization Science.Google Scholar