Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-6kn8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T07:33:16.117Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The foundation is solid, if you know where to look: comment on Felin and Foss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2010

BRIAN T. PENTLAND
BRIAN T. PENTLAND*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
*
*Email: pentland@bus.msu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This paper offers an alternative to the view of the routines literature provided by T. Felin and N. J. Foss, ‘The Endogenous Origins of Experience, Routines and Organizational Capabilities: The Poverty of Stimulus’, published by the Journal of Institutional Economics. The emphasis here is on practice-based theories of organizational routines that are grounded in close, ethnographic observation of real routines. While this literature may be unfamiliar to some readers, it is relevant here because it specifically contradicts the core assertions made by Felin and Foss. Further, this literature provides a clear theoretical foundation for subsequent research on problems such as stability and change in routines, the nature of capabilities and dynamic capabilities, and complex ecologies of routines.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 7 , Special Issue 2: Business Routines , June 2011 , pp. 279 - 293
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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abell, P., Felin, T., and Foss, N. J. (2008), ‘Building Micro-Foundations for the Routines, Capabilities, and Performance Links’, Managerial and Decision Economics, 29: 489–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amburgey, T. L., Kelly, D., and Barnett, W. P. (1993), ‘Resetting the Clock: The Dynamics of Organizational Change and Failure’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 38: 51–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barley, S. R. (1986), ‘Technology as an Occasion for Structuring: Evidence from the Observation of CT Scanners and the Social Order of Radiology Departments’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 31: 78–108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bourdieu, P. (1990), The Logic of Practice, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1956), ‘Three Models for the Description of Language’, IRE Transactions on Information Theory, IT-2: 113–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, M. D. (2007), ‘Reading Dewey: Reflections on the Study of Routine’, Organization Studies, 28: 773–786.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, M. D. and Bacdayan, P. (1994), ‘Organizational Routines are Stored as Procedural Memory: Evidence from a Laboratory Study’, Organization Science, 5: 554–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, M. D., Burkhart, R., Dosi, G., Egidi, M., Marengo, L., Warglien, M., and Winter, S. (1996), ‘Routines and Other Recurring Action Patterns of Organizations: Contemporary Research Issues’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 5: 653–698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Adderio, L. (2008), ‘The Performativity of Routines: Theorising the Influence of Artifacts and Distributed Agencies on Routines Dynamics’, Research Policy, 37: 769–789.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Egidi, M. and Narduzzo, A. (1997), ‘The Emergence of Path-dependent Behaviors in Cooperative Contexts’, International Journal of Industrial Organization, 15: 677–709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emirbayers, M. and Mische, A. (1998), ‘What is Agency?’, American Journal of Sociology, 103: 962–1023.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, M. S. (2000), ‘Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change’, Organization Science, 11: 611–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, M. S. (2003), ‘A Performative Perspective on Stability and Change in Organizational Routines’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 12: 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
Feldman, M. S. and Rafaeli, A. (2002), ‘Organizational Routines as Sources of Connections and Understandings’, Journal of Management Studies, 39: 309–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felin, T. and Foss, N. J. (2006), ‘Individuals and Organizations: Thoughts on a Micro-Foundations Project for Strategic Management and Organizational Analysis’, Research Methodology in Strategy and Management, 3: 253–288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felin, T. and Foss, N. J. (2011), ‘The Endogenous Origins of Experience, Routines, and Organizational Capabilities: the Poverty of Stimulus’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 7 (2), doi: 10.1017/S1744137410000214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, A. (1984), The Constitution of Society, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Goh, J. M., Gao, G.. and Agarwal, R. forthcoming, ‘Evolving Work Routines: Adaptive Routinization of Information Technology in Healthcare’, Information Systems Research.Google Scholar
Hillison, D. (2009), Digitally-Enabled Organizational Routines at the Organization-Environment Boundary: Buffering and the Role of Technology, unpublished PhD Dissertation, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Howard-Grenville, J. A. (2005), ‘The Persistence of Flexible Organizational Routines: The Role of Agency and Organizational Context’, Organization Science, 16: 618–636.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchins, E. (1991), ‘Organizing Work by Adaptation’, Organization Science, 2: 14–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B. (2005), Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor–Network Theory, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, J. (2004), After Method: Mess in Social Science Research, Abingdon, UK: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazaric, N. (2008), ‘Routines and Routinization: An Exploration of some Micro-Cognitive Foundations’, in Becker, M. C. (ed.), Handbook of Organizational Routines, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, pp. 205–227.Google Scholar
Lazaric, N. and Denis, B. (2005), ‘Routinisation and Memorisation of Tasks Within a Workshop: An Illustration Through a Case Study’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 14: 873–896.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonardi, P. M. forthcoming, ‘When Flexible Routines Meet Flexible Technologies: Affordance, Constraint, and the Imbrication of Human and Material Agencies’, MIS Quarterly.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: 159–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, B. H. (1980), ‘Structuralism Versus Individualism: Part 1, Shadowboxing in the Dark’, Social Forces, 59: 336–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, K. D., Pentland, B. T., and Choi, S. (2010), ‘Organizational Memory and Routines’, Helsinki Conference on the Micro-level Origins of Organizational Routines and Capabilities, 19–20 June 2010.Google Scholar
Nelson, S. G. and Winter, S. (1982), An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Newmeyer, F. J. (1983), Grammatical Theory: Its Limits and its Possibilities, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Orlikowski, W. J. (2007), ‘Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work’, Organization Studies, 28: 1435–1448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orr, J. (1996), Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Pentland, B., Haerem, T., and Hillison, D. (2010), ‘Comparing Organizational Routines as Recurrent Patterns of Action’, Organization Studies, 31: 917–940.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B., Haerem, T., and Hillison, D. forthcoming, ‘The (N)ever Changing World: Stability and Change in Organizational Routines’, Organization Science.Google Scholar
Pentland, B. T. (1995), ‘Grammatical Models of Organizational Processes’, Organization Science, 6: 541–556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B. T. (1999), ‘Organizations as Networks of Action’, in Baum, J. and McKelvey, B. (eds.), Variations in Organization Science: In Honor of Donald T. Campbell, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 237–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Feldman, M. S. (2005), ‘Organizational Routines as a Unit of Analysis’, Industrial and Corporate Change, 14: 793–815.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Feldman, M. S. (2007), ‘Narrative Networks: Patterns of Technology and Organization’, Organization Science, 18: 781–795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pentland, B. T., Feldman, M. S., Becker, M. C., and Liu, P. (2010), ‘The Temporal Foundations of Organizational Routines’, Helsinki Conference on the Micro-level Origins of Organizational Routines and Capabilities, 19–20 June 2010.Google Scholar
Pentland, B. T. and Rueter, H. H. (1994), ‘Organizational Routines as Grammars of Action’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 39: 484–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pullum, G. K. and Scholz, B. C. (2002), ‘Empirical Assessment of Stimulus Poverty Arguments’, The Linguistic Review, 19: 9–50.Google Scholar
Rerup, C. and Feldman, M. S. forthcoming, ‘Routines as a Source of Change in Organizational Schema: The Role of Trial-and-Error Learning’, Academy of Management Journal.Google Scholar
Schreyogg, G. and Kliesch-Eberl, M. (2007), ‘How Dynamic Can Organizational Capabilities Be? Towards A Dual-Process Model Of Capability Dynamization’, Strategic Management Journal, 28: 913–933.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schulz, M. (2008), ‘Staying on Track: A Voyage to the Internal Mechanisms of Routine Reproduction’, in Becker, M. C. (ed.), Handbook of Organizational Routines, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, pp. 228–257.Google Scholar
Suchman, L. A. (1983), ‘Office Procedure as Practical Action: Models of Work and System Design’, ACM Transactions on Office Systems, 1: 320–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsoukas, H. (1991), ‘The Missing Link: A Transformational View of Metaphors in Organizational Science’, The Academy of Management Review, 16: 566–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, S. (2003), ‘Understanding Dynamic Capabilities’, Strategic Management Journal, 24: 991–995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, S. (2011) ‘Problems at the Foundation? Comments on Felin and Foss’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 7 (2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (1958), Philosophical Investigations, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Zbaracki, M. J. and Bergen, M. (2010), ‘When Truces Collapse: A Longitudinal Study of Price Adjustment Routines’, Organization Science, 21: 955–972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar