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This study developed new measures of the routine and non-routine task contents of managerial, professional, technical, and clerical occupations from a workload perspective. Here, we present a comparative analysis of the workload structures of state and industrial sector employees.

Our method involves detailed descriptions of work processes and an element-wise time study. We collected and analysed data to obtain a workload structure that falls within three conceptual task categories: (i) non-routine analytic tasks, (ii) non-routine interactive tasks and (iii) routine cognitive tasks. A total of 2,312 state and industrial sector employees in Kazakhstan participated in the study. The data were collected using a proprietary web application that resembles a timesheet.

The study results are consistent with the general trend reported by previous studies: the higher the job level, the lower the occupation’s routine task content. In addition, the routine cognitive task contents of managerial, professional, technical, and clerical occupations in the industrial sector are higher than those in local governments. The work of women is also more routinary than that of men. Finally, vthe routine cognitive task contents of occupations in administrative units are higher than those of occupations in substantive units.

Our study sought to address the challenges of using the task-based approach associated with measuring tasks by introducing a new measurement framework. The main advantage of our task measures is a direct approach to assessing workloads consisting of routine tasks, which allows for an accurate estimation of potential staff reductions due to the automation of work processes.

Organizational change is a key mechanism to ensure the sustainability of healthcare systems. However, healthcare organizations are persistently difficult to change, and literature is riddled with examples of failed change endeavors. In this chapter, we attempt to unravel the underlying causes for failed organizational change. We distinguish three types of change with different levels of depth that require different change approaches. Transformations are the deepest forms of change where beliefs and principles need to be modified to successfully influence routines. Renewals are deep forms of change where principles need to be modified to successfully influence routines. Improvements are shallow forms of change where only modifications at the level of routines are needed. Using deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as our metaphor, we propose a theory of “organizational DNA” to understand organizations and these three types of organizational changes. We posit that organizations are made up of a double helix consisting of a so-called “social string,” which contains the “soft” interaction or communication among the organization's members, and a so-called “technical string,” which contains “hard” organizational aspects such as structure and technology. Ladders of organizational nucleotides (i.e., Routines, Principles, and Beliefs) connect this double helix in various combinations. Together, the double helix and accompanying nucleotides make up the DNA of an organization. Without knowledge of the architecture of organizational DNA and whether a change addresses beliefs, principles, and/or routines, we believe that organizational change is constrained and based on luck rather than change management expertise. Following this metaphor, we show that organizational change fails when it attempts to change one part of the DNA (e.g., routines) in a way that renders it incompatible with the connecting components (e.g., principles and beliefs). We discuss how the theory can be applied in practice using an exemplar case.

In this chapter, the authors enter the world of ballet to be inspired by artistic teams. This original point of view proposes a complementary understanding of the dynamics of routines replication where preserving the authenticity of the project’s intent is emphasized over economic efficiency considerations.

The authors propose that analyzing the remounting of a ballet as an in-depth extreme case study provides an opportunity to learn more about other aspects that can be relevant in transfer stories: the importance accorded to the intent of the routine to be transferred; the existence of a dialogical dynamic that engages artifacts and memories of this intent; the existence of a meta-routine that structures and enables the transfer of sub-routines across geographical distance in another context. The authors will see that, in this case, routines replication is also made possible through sharing of a routine’s ostensive aspect which is embedded in a professional culture.

The overarching priority in remounting a show is strict respect for the choreographer’s original intent. As replicator and imitator teams encounter the consequences of a new location and its characteristics, the authors will examine how they face the replication dilemma, coordinate themselves, and use innovation to achieve replication.

Post-acquisition integration matters for overall M&A outcome. However within this phase researchers have struggled to identify clear links between integration activities and post-acquisition outcome. This may be due to using organisational levels of analysis, where sub-organisational issues serve to confound findings. In order to unpack the post-acquisition phase, and to delve more deeply into organisations, this paper adopts a more granular perspective on integration activities by focusing upon the building blocks of organisations. Specifically we investigate ordinary routine amalgamation and their impact upon meta-routine outcome during acquisition integration. Drawing upon two longitudinal integration cases and using ‘retroductive’ analysis, two types of amalgamation are identified, namely ‘combination’ and ‘superimposition’. We find that, while the basic nature of routines, such as multiplicity and nestedness, inhibit routine amalgamation, external interference in the form of context, structural change or introduction of additional routines is needed to stabilise amalgamated routines. From our findings we are able to suggest a number of testable propositions about the factors that influence the amalgamation of routines. This empirical study contributes to the M&A literature by opening up the ‘black box’ of post-acquisition integration by providing details at a granular level of what actually happens during integrations.

Organizational routines emerge in firms during the process of new venture creation. Typically, they are imprinted and sometimes replicated by the entrepreneurs creating the organization, reflecting individual and contextual characteristics. In particular cases, organizations are designed for replicating routines for new ventures. The authors investigate one such case from the IT industry using a dynamic routine perspective and focus on how routines originally created by an organization are replicated in several new ventures. In more detail, the authors focus on how routine replication counter-intuitively allows for innovating in new venture creation. The authors find that routine replication supports entrepreneurial innovation in three ways: (1) the replicator organization’s accelerating routines unburden the replicator organization’s innovating routines; (2) the replicator organization’s accelerating routines unburden the new venture’s innovating routines; and (3) the new venture’s accelerating routines unburden the new venture’s innovating routines. The authors contribute to the discussion about the replication dilemma by conceptualizing “unburdening” as a mechanism that allows both routinization and innovation benefits to be reaped.

In this chapter, the authors examine the use of deceit to drive routine emergence. The authors do so by tracing the relationship among deceit, roles, and routine dynamics in the context of Romeo pimps and the women they lure into sex trafficking. Previous research has focused on routine participants openly negotiating their roles and expected interactions during the (re) creation of routines. In contrast, this study shows how Romeo pimps use deceit to control the co-constitution of roles and increasingly coercive actions of the “Romeo pimp routine” – a process of premeditated routine emergence designed to entrap the women. The authors contribute to the literature on routine dynamics by emphasizing the unexplored influence of deceit on the interplay between roles and routines. Bringing deception to center stage in routine dynamics highlights the importance of linking actors and actions to motivations that exist behind the veil of transparently observable behavior.

This chapter advances understanding of how professional expertise is enacted and created to accomplish routines in the context of technology-mediated work. Information and communication technologies broaden the participation of professionals with various specialist skills and expertise to accomplish work together, which is particularly salient in health care. Broadening participation, however, creates jurisdictional conflict among professionals. Thus, a key challenge of interprofessional work is the need to mutually adapt established professional routines and overcome jurisdictional conflict to perform interdependent routine tasks. The authors examine how professionals adapt established routines by analyzing the new interactions and interdependent actions required to accomplish technology-mediated geriatric consultation routines. The findings of this study show that professionals create new patterns of actions that are shaped by relational forms of professional expertise, namely selective and blending expertise. The findings and theoretical insights contribute to the literature on routine dynamics by highlighting the importance of relational expertise, and showing how it can transform and destabilize otherwise established professional routines.

This chapter reports on the “CEO’s-eye-view” of the 1990 financial crisis at Citibank using unique data from CEO John Reed’s private archives. This qualitative analysis sheds light on questions that have perennially plagued executives and intrigued scholars: How do organizations change routines in order to overcome inertia in the face of radical change in the environment? And, specifically, what is the role of the CEO in this process? Inertial behavior in such circumstances has been attributed to ingrained routines that are based on cognitive and motivational truces. Routines are performed because organizational participants find them to cohere to a particular cognitive frame about what should be done (the cognitive dimension) and to resolve conflicts about what gets rewarded or sanctioned (the motivational dimension). The notion of a “truce” explains how routines are “routinely” activated. Routines are inertial because the dissolution of the truce would be inconsistent with frames held by organizational participants and fraught with the risk of unleashing unmanageable conflict among interests in the organization. Thus, the challenge for the CEO in making intended change is both to break the existing truce and to remake a new one. In this study, I uncover how the existing organizational truce led to the crisis at Citibank, why Reed’s initial attempts to respond failed, and how he ultimately found ways to break out of the old truce and establish new routines that helped the bank survive. These findings offer insight into the cognitive and motivational microfoundations of macro theories about organizational response to radical change.

Large corporate policy changes usually take the form of a top-down approach based on a clearly envisioned routine and an implementation plan. Yet, the authors report on a study of a bottom-up approach in which key members of a service company created a new hiring routine that supported a company-wide new human resource management (HRM) hiring policy without any prior envisioned plan. We pay particularly close attention to the perspectives of this company’s HRM professionals, line managers, and middle-level managers. The authors used the literature on routine dynamics to examine in detail which actions were taken by key members in this organization to create the new hiring routine. Through in-depth interviews, the authors found that line managers, HRM professionals, and middle-level managers significantly differed in their points of view regarding their role in the new hiring routine, and how it should work best. As a result of these different points of view, the actors took different actions that nonetheless contributed to building the new routine including creating new internal and external connections, supplying expertise, and ensuring oversight of the new way of hiring. The authors also observed that the creation of this new routine also implied conflicts as a result of different points of view and actions. Nonetheless, the end result was the establishment of a new company-wide accepted hiring routine that even surpassed the expectations of top management. With this study, the authors contribute to the literature on routine dynamics by demonstrating the generative potential of multiple points of view and conflicts in creating new routines involved in large corporate policy change by showing how misalignments between the actors’ perspectives do not need to hamper the creation of new action patterns but rather support it.

It has long been recognized that overwhelmed employees of bureaucratic organizations use a variety of strategies to cope with demand for their services, often at the expense of their clients. One such strategy involves discouraging clients from taking action by making references to complex bureaucratic procedures and routines. While the public management literature has a well-developed research program focusing on the mobilization of such administrative burdens, organization theory seems to be lagging behind in the analysis of that type of misconduct. In this chapter, we explain how references to the representational dimension of routines can be used to discourage clients from taking action, what are the boundary conditions of such a strategy, and its possible consequences for clients.