Dynamic Capabilities? Unleashing Their Dynamics through a Practice Perspective on Organizational Routines

Abstract

The current conceptualization of dynamic capabilities entails a paradox, one that hampers the achievement of one of the framework’s main missions: While studies on dynamic capabilities claim to offer explanations of continuous, routine-based organizational change, their prevalent conceptualization of organizational routines is rather undynamic and less prone to change. Thus, we propose to draw on an alternative, practice-based understanding of organizational routines to unravel the “dynamics” of dynamic capabilities. The practice perspective captures and explains the internal dynamics of organizational routines and positions the performance of organizational routines as a source of both organizational stability and change. This perspective offers to deepen our understanding of the dynamics within dynamic capabilities as driver of routine-based organizational change. To foster a research agenda that advances our understanding of dynamic capabilities from a practice perspective on organizational routines, we provide onto-epistemological, theoretical, and methodological implications of such a “dynamic view” of dynamic capabilities.

Making routines the same: Crafting similarity and singularity in routines transfer

“…While these have been variously identified as 'change routines', 'dynamic routines' (Nelson and Winter 1982), and 'dynamic capabilities' (Teece et al 1997, Dosi et al2000 they have not so far been fully theorized or captured empirically. Our findings, based on routine dynamics, therefore usefully complement the capability view of routines (Parmigiani andHoward-Grenville 2011, Davies et al 2018) by helping 'unravel the dynamics of dynamic capabilities' (Wenzel et al 2020).…”

“…This calls for the need to investigate what these mechanisms may consist of, and how they may help achieve and sustain routines similarity and singularity, an endeavour which is important beyond transfer, as it can shed new light over the heart of routines and routine dynamics. While the extant literature has in fact theorized the existence of 'dynamic routines' (Nelson and Winter 1982), 'dynamic capabilities' (Teece et al 1997) or 'routines that change routines' (Dosi et al 2000), we still know little to date about what these routines might look like and how they operate (Wenzel et al 2020).…”

A (Re)view of the Philosophical Foundations of Strategic Management

“…using different philosophical assumptions). For instance, Wenzel et al (2020) use a constructivist/processual approach grounded on a practice perspective to illuminate the dynamics within dynamic capabilities, a conception of organizational routines that usually implicates a positivist/entitative onto-epistemology.…”

Turning German automotive supply chains into sponsors for sustainability

“…Today, the discipline accounts for a wide and growing body of academic research (Schwarz 2012). Respective studies have examined, inter alia, the drivers and barriers of change (Kr al and Kr alov a 2016; Kiesnere and Baumgartner 2019), the capabilities needed to conduct change (Battilana et al 2010;Wenzel, Danner-Schr€ oder, and Spee 2020), or the consecutive phases of change processes (Dixon, Meyer, and Day 2010). Interestingly, most contributions to this discipline are still deeply-rooted in a rather limited number of classic change models, which even today determine our understanding of CM (By 2005).…”