Talking About Routines: The Role of Reflective Talk in Routine Change

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the role of reflective talk in how routines change. We argue that talk enables routine participants to collectively reflect on the routine and work out new ways of enacting it. Drawing on a year-long ethnographic study of a start-up company in the pharmaceutical industry, we show that talk supports the enactment of collective reflection by enabling the participants to (1) name and situate the issue to be discussed with regard to the performative and ostensive aspects of the routine, (2) jointly envisage and explore alternative ways of enacting the routine, and (3) evaluate and question these suggestions from different angles. We examine how these aspects of reflective talk play out in different types of routine change and how the progressive unfolding of the talk reveals distinct opportunities for routine change. With our findings, we shed light on the role of collective reflection in routine change, on variation and selective retention in routine change, and on how organizational members balance the need for consistency and change in the enactment of routines.

The Jam Session Model for Group Creativity and Innovative Technology

“…Overall, heightened levels of entrepreneurial activity have been proven to be related to education and strong entrepreneurial ecosystems (Cohen, 2005;Klapper, et al, 2007;Wessner, 2005). Although organizational innovation and the jam session model are functionally different, we argue that they share the same representational space metaphorically and methodologically (Meyer et al, 1998), as for instance, organizational routines (Dittrich et al, 2016) and creative projects (Obstfeld, 2012).…”

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

“…Similarly, in their study of shipping routines for live cell samples, Dittrich et al (2016) point to the critical importance of the interaction between collective reflection and action in changing routines. They focus on talk as a special kind of action that supports the development of new routines.…”

“…A key element of the routine dynamics perspective is to identify the possibilities that are inherent in agency, reflection, and repetitive accomplishment (effortful or otherwise). While reflection is a general capacity shown to be operative in the studies presented in this special issue, the studies by Bucher and Langley (2016) and Dittrich et al (2016) focus specifically on opportunities for reflection created respectively through reflective spaces and through different ways of talking about routines. As shown in the papers in this issue, agency, reflection, and repetitive accomplishment create the possibility (not the necessity) of path making and endogenous change.…”

“…Some organizations and some tasks are particularly dependent on simultaneously maintaining both pattern and variation. Dittrich et al (2016), for instance, note that the startup firm they studied experienced pressures for both consistency and change. The routines they studied had to be enacted in ways that kept these competing pressures in play.…”

The Influence of Routine Interdependence and Skillful Accomplishment on the Coordination of Standardizing and Customizing

“…They are not black-boxed entities that change in response to exogenous shocks (Cohen et al, 1996;Nelson & Winter 1982). Rather, they are 'effortful accomplishments' (Pentland & Rueter 1994, 486) that may generate change (Dittrich, Guerard & Seidl, forthcoming;Pentland, Feldman, Becker & Liu 2012;Zbaracki & Bergen 2010). The performative view conceptualizes routines as instantiated within mutually constitutive ostensive and performative aspects (Feldman & Pentland 2003).…”