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Sub-theme 15: Activating Paths in Motion: Routine Dynamics and the Temporal Fabric of Organizing

Convenors:
Christian A. Mahringer
University of Stuttgart, Germany
Sunny Mosangzi Xu
Aarhus University, Denmark
Brian T. Pentland
Michigan State University, US

Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Organizational routines are central to organizing because they balance continuity and flexibility (Feldman et al., 2021; Mahringer et al., 2024). A key ontological commitment in routine dynamics research is to theorize routines as temporal phenomena. They express the patterning and projecting of action in the passage of time, linking past and future as actors perform in the ongoing present (Feldman, 2016; Turner & Rindova, 2021; Xu & Carlile, 2024). This temporal view becomes especially salient in a world permeated by digital technologies, sustainability transformations, and grand societal challenges, where organizing is confronted with ongoing and emergent change.

The concept of paths provides a powerful lens to capture this temporal progression (Feuls et al., 2025; Garud et al., 2010; Goh & Pentland, 2019; Mahringer et al., 2026; Pentland et al., 2020, 2025). It highlights how sequences of action generate self-reinforcing dynamics, branching possibilities, and cumulative changes. The path concept is well suited to conceptualize routines, because it helps to understand how they can remain stable (reproduce existing paths) or evolve (enact new paths). We propose to explore small and large patterns of actions (Sele et al., 2024) through paths in routines (the multiple performative variations and potential directions that coexist within a routine) and paths of routines (the evolving trajectories through which routines themselves develop). Paths in routines interweave into paths of routines, as situated actions both shape and are shaped by the longer-term evolution of organizational routines.

Thinking about routines through the notion of paths foregrounds both their historicity and open-endedness. It invites attention to how actors navigate emergent tensions, how technologies and other artifacts create paths, and how organizational futures are enacted through carrying out everyday routines. The study of paths in and of routines thus offers a generative perspective for understanding how organizing is both stable and evolving amid continuous flux. Possible areas for contribution include (but are not limited to):

  • Path plasticity: Under what conditions do paths of routines become locked in or open to redirection, and what mechanisms enable or constrain such change? How do actors unlock locked-in paths for new directions? 

  • From paths to trajectories: How do situated variations (paths in routines) weave into trajectories (paths of routines)? How do projected trajectories enact situated variations? When do trajectories break into pieces? How do actors repair/reconnect trajectories through situated variations?

  • Temporal dynamics: How do the multiple temporalities of routines, technologies, and institutional fields interact to shape the evolution of paths? How do paths of different temporalities attune/sync into trajectories? How do actors change the pace of paths in routines?

  • Digitalization: How do digital tools, data traces, and algorithmic technologies such as AI stabilize or transform routine paths over time?

  • Sustainability and grand challenges: How do actors identify new paths to a sustainable future, or fail to do so? How do actors change the direction of existing trajectories toward desired futures, near and distant? How do multiple trajectories (e.g., Net Zero, biodiversity, and equality) interact and shape paths in routines?

  • Future-making: How do routines orient actors toward possible futures, and how do paths evolve as new futures are envisioned and enacted? How do actors enact futures through paths in routines?

  • Methodological advances: How can processual, visual, or computational methods trace the emergence, branching, and recombination of routine paths empirically? How can we capture situated potentiality through sensorial and embodied methods?

We invite scholars from organization theory, strategy, sociology, information systems, sustainability, and related fields to engage with the study of paths, trajectories, and routine dynamics. The sub-theme welcomes conceptual and empirical work that examines how paths in and of routines evolve, persist, or shift over time, and how actors navigate, improvise within, and redirect the unfolding sequences of action that constitute organizational life. By tracing how such paths emerge, branch, and are reoriented, the sub-theme contributes to the broader theme “The Games We Play” by showing how actors, through situated routine performances, both adhere to and subtly rewrite the rules of organizational play.
 

References
  • Feldman, M. S. (2016). Routines as process: Past, present, and future. In J. Howard-Grenville, C. Rerup, A. Langley, & H. Tsoukas (Eds.), Organizational routines: How they are created, maintained, and changed (pp. 23–46). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198759485.003.0002
  • 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.), The Cambridge handbook of routine dynamics (pp. 1–18). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108993340.002
  • Feuls, M., Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (2025). Putting distant futures into action: How actors sustain a course of action toward distant-future goals through path enactment. Academy of Management Journal, 68(2), 297–325. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2022.0257
  • Garud, R., Kumaraswamy, A., & Karnøe, P. (2010). Path dependence or path creation? Journal of Management Studies, 47(4), 760–774. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2009.00914.x
  • Goh, K., & Pentland, B. T. (2019). From actions to paths to patterning: Toward a dynamic theory of patterning in routines. Academy of Management Journal, 62(6), 1901–1929. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2018.0042
  • Mahringer, C. A., Dittrich, K., & Renzl, B. (2026). Provisional directionality: Unpacking the prospective dimension of organizational routines. Organization Studies, 47(6), 847–870. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406251400483
  • Mahringer, C. A., Pentland, B. T., Renzl, B., Sele, K., & Spee, P. (2024). Routine dynamics: Organizing in a world in flux. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 88, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20240000088001
  • Pentland, B. T., Kremser, W., & Goh, K. T. (2025). Path nets: Concurrence and recurrence in the dynamics of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 50(1), 114–137. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2022.0412
  • Pentland, B. T., Mahringer, C. A., Dittrich, K., Feldman, M. S., & Ryan Wolf, J. (2020). Process multiplicity and process dynamics: Weaving the space of possible paths. Organization Theory, 1, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/2631787720963138
  • 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. https://doi.org/10.1177/14761270231215685
  • Turner, S. F., & Rindova, V. P. (2021). Time, temporality and history in routine dynamics. In M. S. Feldman, B. T. Pentland, L. D’Adderio, K. Dittrich, C. Rerup, & D. Seidl (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of routine dynamics (pp. 266–276). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108993340.023
  • Xu, S. M., & Carlile, P. R. (2024). Agency, action, and time: A relational approach to routine dynamics in a world in flux. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 88, 245–269. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20240000088012


Christian A. Mahringer is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. His research adopts a practice-theoretical perspective to examine how organizational actors coordinate and navigate strategic change in response to emerging technologies and grand challenges. His work has been published in academic journals, including the 'Academy of Management Journal', 'Journal of Management Studies', and 'Organization Studies'.
Sunny Mosangzi Xu is an assistant professor at the Department of Management, Aarhus University, Denmark and an affiliated member at Centre for Organization and Time, Copenhagen Business School. Her research explores the phenomenon of transforming established trajectories through the lens of spacetime, more-than-human materiality, and routines. In her ethnographic work, she has examined in depth the production of science in the university-industry collaboration process and the production of regenerative agri-food systems in the green transition.
Brian T. Pentland is the Main Street Capital Corporation Intellectual Capital Endowed Professor in the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is focused on analyzing and visualizing repetitive patterns of action, such as organizational routines.