Rethinking Stability and Change in the Study of Organizational Routines: Difference and Repetition in a Newspaper-Printing Factory

Abstract

Organizational life consists of an ever-changing world of encounters, experiences and complex sociomaterial relations. Within this context, standard routines can be seen as a solution to problems of inefficiency within organizations, especially when associated with images of stability, repeatability and standardization. This can bring a sense of order where there is disorder; and stability in the face of change. However, while standard routines may be seen as providing solutions within complex and everchanging organizational worlds, they can also be viewed as sources of organizational problems. Through an ethnographic examination of two routines within a newspaper-printing factory, our paper seeks to build on and add to contributions within Routine Dynamics (RD) by highlighting the emergence and coexistence of change and stability and the enactment of standard routines through a performative process of difference and repetition. In particular, our paper examines how organizational stability and change emerge through the dynamic relations underlying the enactment of difference and repetition and how these relations involve various-sometimes hidden-micro processes that include the simplification and amplification of facts, scripts, and concerns. By drawing together the findings from our ethnographic research, studies within the area of RD and concepts relating to the work of Deleuze and Latour, our paper therefore contributes to the work on the repetition of routines by further unpacking the generative socio-material dynamics, creative forces and micro-processes that underlie the emergence of stability and change through difference and repetition.

Beyond Routines as Things: Introduction to the Special Issue on Routine Dynamics

“…How routines are implicated in creativity (e.g., Sonenshein 2016) or innovation (e.g., Sele and Grand 2016) turns on this relationship between variety and change. Moreover, the great strength of engaging in longitudinal studies (e.g., Aroles andMcLean 2016, Berente et al 2016) to address the question of how organizations maintain pattern and variety is the ability to see how synchronic processes (variety) are connected to diachronic processes (stability and change).…”

“…Aroles and McLean (2016) discuss how meetings become the venue for shaping emerging standards by opening up the apparent objectivity in "matters of fact" and translating it into "matters of concern." The authors show how printers at a newspaper use meetings to question the seemingly objective and reliable nature of standard printing quality parameters by highlighting problems and raising controversies.…”

“…Aroles and McLean (2016) use an ethnographic study of newspaper printing Downloaded from informs.org by [171.25.193.132] on 20 June 2016, at 12:32 . For personal use only, all rights reserved.…”

Assembling international development: Accountability and the disarticulation of a social movement

“…Both similarity and difference are regulated (for more on difference amongst repetition or variation amongst stability see Deleuze (1994) and Aroles & McLean (2016)). 20 According to the director of an El Salvadorian NGO: "There were agencies that approved projects for six or even ten years.…”

Towards a Political Philosophy of Management: Performativity & Visibility in Management Practices

“…This has notably been evidenced through the body of literature lying at the intersection of 'process philosophy' and organisation studies (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002;Hernes, 2008Hernes, , 2014Nayak and Chia, 2011;Olsen, 2011;Küpers, 2014;Aroles and McLean, 2016;Helin et al, 2016) as well as in some STS-inspired perspectives, such as agential realism (Barad, 2003) or the actor-network theory (Czarniawska and Hernes, 2005;Latour, 2005).…”