Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Routine dynamics has emerged as a field that examines the emergence, reproduction and change of recognizable patterns of actions (Feldman et al., 2021). Building on Feldman and Pentland’s (2003) work, the focus on situated action has enabled scholars to study organizational routines as dynamic and generative processes that are shaped through continuous performing and patterning (Feldman et al., 2021). Situated actions are performed in material, contextual and social circumstances (Feldman et al., 2016; Suchman, 1987).
 
From the start, and inspired by STS and ANT (e.g., Latour, 2005), routine dynamics explored how artefacts (e.g. machines, algorithms, or robots) and materiality (e.g. earthquake scenarios or retail stores) are part of the enactment and performance of organizational routines (D’Adderio, 2011; Glaser et al., 2021; Danner-Schröder & Geiger, 2016; Sonenshein, 2016; Sele & Grand, 2016). These studies allowed routine dynamics to move non-human actors that are man-made from a peripheral role, seen as insignificant accessories, to being at the center of organizational routines – significant to their performances and outcomes (D’Adderio, 2021; Sele, 2021).
 
However, within this material turn, the focus has been largely on materiality in a human social context and non-human actors, such as fires (Danner-Schröder & Sele, 2024), forests (Bonin & Sele, 2022), or cows (Xu & Carlile, 2024), have been largely neglected. For this sub-theme, we call on those interested in routines and practices more broadly speaking to engage with organization-nature relations. This sub-theme seeks to reframe routine dynamics from a more-than-human perspective and identify ways to contribute to organization studies in tackling the acute social-ecological crises that we are confronted with (Sele et al., 2024; Xu & Carlile, 2024).
 
Considering the non-humans in both the ecological and social sphere would allow us to explore “what exceeds the human and how it is configured in particular times, places, and research practices” (Gherardi et al., 2024, p. 7). Take agricultural production, for instance. To understand the effects of food production routines that are optimized for efficiency and the potential for transforming food production to be more regenerative and nature-positive, we need to understand how the more-than-human actors, such as cows, grass, micro-climate, machines, and technologies, are implicated in the existing production routine (Xu & Carlile, 2024). Another example is the alpine tourism industry in which global production and consumption practices affect large-scale ecological and glacial rhythmic changes (Nadegger & Wegerer, 2024), which have been met with artificial snow-producing routines that allow the tourism industry to coordinate skiing with the work and school schedules of skiers.
 
More-than-human is a turn to the “sociality beyond human” (Lien & Pálsson, 2021) that emerged in several disciplines including cultural geography (e.g., Whatmore, 2006), anthropology (e.g., Haraway, 2008), and sociology (e.g., Latour, 2017). Going beyond the focus on humans only, the more-than-human perspective considers both human and non-human actors – animate and in-animate beings and things – and their interrelations without distinguishing the human from the non-human a priori (Hodder, 2016; Whatmore, 2006). It is an attempt to shift the onto-epistemological assumption of the nature-culture dichotomy that is deeply rooted in Western thinking (Ingold, 2022).
 
We believe that the inclusion of nature and, hence, a more radical shift towards more-than-human approaches will not only enable us to discover new aspects within routine dynamics, but even more so how these dynamics play a crucial role in how we engage with issues of societal and environmental concern at the small and large scale. Indeed, very rarely do these issues appear in isolation or happen only locally or globally, which means that embracing actors of all sorts and their “actions” is crucial to co-create the world we want to live in (Benjamin, 2022). As we are charting into an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable future, organizations will need to make more effort to grapple with the social-ecological crises by renewing and transforming the routines that have generated them and that can help us deal with and mitigate them (Sele et al., 2024; Xu & Carlile, 2024).
 
This sub-theme seeks papers that explore the role of more-than-human participants in shaping and transforming routines. We encourage empirical and conceptual papers with a variety of different theoretical lenses and methodological approaches. The aim is to better understand what routine dynamics is and can be from a more-than-human perspective and how routines can and should be reimagined when we shift the onto-epistemological assumption of the organization-nature dichotomy.
 
While we are particularly interested in encouraging a conversation about the more-than-human participants in routines, we also welcome papers that broadly contribute to the practice-based perspective on routines. Here are some example topics that would fit with this sub-theme:
 
Reframing actors in routine dynamics

• Who/what is/should be considered as actors in routine dynamics?
• How do these diverse actors interrelate and interact to enact routines through performing, patterning, and projecting?
• How can we conceptually, empirically, and methodologically take a more-than-human perspective that tends to these interrelations among actors, without assuming centrality of humans or non-humans a priori?

 
Reframing temporality in routine dynamics

• How might routines as temporal structures in organizations be reconceptualized and reframed when taking a more-than-human perspective?
• How can we incorporate nature's time and temporality in the study of organizational routines?
• How can the temporalities of routines from a more-than-human perspective help to recognize the deep entanglement between organizations and nature?

 
Reframing networks of routines as issues of societal concern

• How can alternative organizing principles that are more ecologically embedded, such as regeneration and circularity, be conceptualized from a routine perspective?
• How can we problematize the phenomena of these alternative organizing principles from a routine dynamic lens? What are its potentials and values? And what are its limits?
• How can we better study organizations and organizing in extreme contexts, such as disasters or crises with a more-than-human perspective?

References

• Benjamin, R. (2022): Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Bonin, F., & Sele, K. (2022): “Performing routines under persistent uncertainty: Re-designing forest planning routines in light of climate change.” Paper presented at the 38^th EGOS Colloquium in Vienna, July 7–9, 2022.
• D’Adderio, L. (2011): “Artifacts at the center of routines: Performing the material turn in routines theory.” Journal of Institutional Economics, 7 (2), 197–230.
• Danner-Schröder, A., & Geiger, D. (2016): “Unravelling the motor of patterning work: Toward an understanding of the microlevel dynamics of standardization and flexibility.” Organization Science, 27 (3), 633–658.
• Danner-Schröder, A., & Sele, K. (2024): “A Routine Dynamics Perspective on the ‘Black Summer’ Bushfires.” Organization Studies, 45 (3), 487–490.
• Feldman, M.S., & Pentland, B.T. (2003): “Reconceptualizing organizational routines as a source of flexibility and change.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 48 (1), 94–118.
• Feldman, M.S., Pentland, B.T., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K., Rerup, C., & Seidl, D. (2021): “What is routine dynamics?” In: M.S. Feldman, B.T. Pentland, L. D’Adderio, K. Dittrich, C. Rerup, & D. Seidl (eds.): Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1–18.
• Feldman, M.S., Pentland, B.T., D’Adderio, L., & Lazaric, N. (2016): “Beyond Routines as Things: Introduction to the Special Issue on Routine Dynamics.” Organization Science, 27 (3), 505–513.
• Gherardi, S, de Vaujany, F.-X., & Silva, P. (2024): “General introduction.” In: F.-X. de Vaujany, S. Gherardi, & P. Silva (eds.): Organization Studies and Posthumanism: Towards a More-than-Human World. London: Routledge, 1–25.
• Glaser, V.L., Pollock, N., & D’Adderio, L. (2021): “The Biography of an Algorithm: Performing algorithmic technologies in organizations.” Organization Theory, 2 (2), https://doi.org/10.1177/26317877211004609
• Haraway, D.J. (2008): When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Hodder, I. (2016): Studies in Human-Thing Entanglement. Stanford, CA: Ian Hodder.
• Ingold, T. (2022): The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
• Latour, B. (2005): Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
• Latour, B. (2017): Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
• Lien, M.E., & Pálsson, G. (2021): “Ethnography beyond the human: The ‘other-than-human’ in ethnographic work.” Ethnos, 86 (1), 1–20.
• Nadegger, M., & Wegerer, P.K. (2024): “Rhythms of repetition and disturbance: Reimagining business-as-usual in the Anthropocene.” Organization, https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084241303098.
• Sele, K. (2021): “Actor-network theory and routine dynamics.” In: M.S. Feldman, B.T. Pentland, L. D’Adderio, K. Dittrich, C. Rerup, & D. Seidl (eds.): Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 73–84.
• Sele, K., & Grand, S. (2016): “Unpacking the dynamics of ecologies of routines: Mediators and their generative effects in routine interactions.” Organization Science, 27 (3), 722–738.
• Sele, K., Mahringer, C.A., Danner-Schröder, A., Grisold, T., & Renzl, B. (2024): “We are all pattern makers! How a flat ontology connects organizational routines and grand challenges.” Strategic Organization, 22 (3), 530–549.
• Sonenshein, S. (2016): “Routines and creativity: From dualism to duality.” Organization Science, 27 (3), 739–758.
• Suchman, L.A .(1987): Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Whatmore, S. (2006): “Materialist returns: Practising cultural geography in and for a more-than-human world.” Cultural Geographies, 13 (4), 600–609.
• Xu, S.M., & Carlile, P.R. (2024): “Agency, Action, and Time: A Relational Approach to Routine Dynamics in a World in Flux.” In: C.A. Mahringer, B.T. Pentland, B. Renzl, K. Sele, & P. Spee (eds): Routine Dynamics: Organizing in a World in Flux. Leeds: Emerald Group Publishing, 245–269.