Routine Dynamics in Action

Replication and Transformation

Martha S. Feldman, Luciana D'Adderio, Katharina Dittrich, Paula Jarzabkowski

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787565876
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Contains an Open Access chapter.
As organizations become increasingly distributed and diverse, and products, technologies and services more complex and dispersed, there is mounting pressure to understand how work can be coordinated across geographical, cultural and intellectual distance, both within and across organizations. As a result, questions arise about how work is accomplished through organizational practices and routines and in particular how patterns of actions are replicated and transformed across different contexts and over time. Routine dynamics has started to explore these dynamics by focusing attention on how routines (as practices) are enacted and, thus, created and re-created over time and across organizational locations through the actions of people and machines.
This book explores central themes in the enactment and coordination of organizational routines, drawing in particular on in-depth case studies and empirically-grounded theorizing. The chapters explore important organizational phenomena in the areas of strategy, entrepreneurship, human resources, health care, social policy, and the arts. Focusing in particular on four central themes in routine dynamics: replication and transfer; ecology and interdependence; action and the generation of novelty and technology and sociomateriality.

CHAPTER 1

REMOUNTING A BALLET IN A DIFFERENT CONTEXT: A COMPLEMENTARY UNDERSTANDING OF ROUTINES TRANSFER THEORIES

Charlotte Blanche and Patrick Cohendet

ABSTRACT

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.

Keywords: Replication dilemma; routine’s intent; meta-routine; ostensive aspect; occupational subculture; artistic team

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, we present an original case study that examines the remounting of a ballet production by interpreting it as a replication of what has been done in one context in another (Winter & Szulanski, 2001). Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal (LGBCM) invites choreographers from all over the world to stage productions for the company by reproducing their original choreography from ballets which have premiered elsewhere. We examine one of them: the remounting in recent years in Montréal of Kaguyahime, a ballet by choreographer Jiří Kylián that was created in 1986 and initially mounted in the 1990s in Europe.

Whereas the theories about routines focus on the competitive and economic consequences of the replication phenomena, this original case allows us to (1) highlight an unusual transfer dynamic as the remounting of a ballet engages music, dance, and design elements; and (2) reframe the focus on another aspect, such as preserving the authenticity of original intent.

Drawing in particular on D’Adderio’s work (2014, 2017) and her dynamic understanding of the replication dilemma, our aim in this chapter is to add to the existing literature by analyzing another way in which the dilemma of replication has been solved. The literature on replication generally approaches the replication dilemma as a context where organization members act with contrasting goals: either replicate or innovate. When aiming at an exact replication strategy (important in high-tech environments), replicating the practices (performances) is the main focus of the replicator teams working under severe constraints of efficiency and reliability. By comparison, in the case of a ballet production, replication teams are working in simpler, more creative environments, where the main focus is on replicating the artistic intent, with less pressure on the exact replication of the practices.

As D’Adderio underlined (2014, p. 1348):

the simultaneous presence of different goals, at different times, in different organizations can lead to very different outcomes. For example, innovation and replication might not always be conflicting in the same way or to the same extent as outlined here. Organizations of lower complexity operating in slower technological and/or innovation environments, for instance, might perceive innovation and replication as being at least partial complements, not substitutes.

In the specific context of the remounting of Kaguyahime, we examine how, caught in a replication dilemma in a creative organization, organizational members used innovation to achieve replication. This solution to the dilemma depends on (1) a specific context where routines are highly coupled and transferred as a routines network through a meta-routine; and (2) the sharing of a routine’s ostensive aspect based on a particular professional culture.

For this purpose, we will present, in the first part, a review of the main concepts on which our study is based. Second, we will present the findings of this specific case study as well as a theoretical analysis. We’ll conclude by applying a complementary understanding to routines replication and discussing the limitations of this research.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Since the pioneering works of March and Simon (1958) and Nelson and Winter (1982), the issue of routines transfer has been widely addressed in the literature. As a strategic advantage, a routine transfer implies “the creation of another routine that is similar to the original routine in significant respects” (Szulanski & Jensen, 2004). Understood as a knowledge transfer from a sending unit (replicator) to a receiving unit (replicatee), (Szulanski, 1996, 2000), the goal is to enable the receiving unit to perform a specific set of routines (Winter & Szulanski, 2001). This perspective requires that much attention be devoted to conceptualizing the transfer strategy in advance (Winter & Szulanski, 2001), by selecting the key elements of the routines to be folded into the replicated routine (Szulanski & Winter, 2002; Winter & Szulanski, 2001).

Indeed, the extent of routine embeddedness in a specific organization and its structures has an important impact on the degree of transferability of routines across different contexts (Becker, 2004). When an organization attempts to adopt external routines from other organizations, complications may arise if the routine is incomplete: this may be due to tacit aspects of the routine but may also be the result of a lack of understanding of which elements of the routine are essential (Winter & Szulanski, 2001). Because multiple practices and technologies are involved, when routines are moved away from their knowledge base and their original context, they may increasingly lose meaning and productivity may decline (Becker, 2004) if they do not fit in the new context. These factors may lead to a reduction in performance which occurs from a complication of cause–effect relationships (Szulanski & Jensen, 2006) and negative interactions (Winter, Szulanski, Ringov, & Jensen, 2012) and hinder a successful transfer. If the template is copied too closely without proper and necessary adaptation to the new environment (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 2002), local resistance to adoption is generated and transfer effectiveness decreases (Szulanski & Jensen, 2008).

When a routine is adopted in a new context, the conditions that gave rise to it are modified. When used in a new context, the routine needs adjustments and translation (Gherardi & Nicolini, 2000). The implicit knowledge of the routine can be translated, reinterpreted, or reinvented (Holden & Von Kortzfleisch, 2004). This phenomenon has been studied by Winter and Szulanski (2001) and termed the “Replication Dilemma,” a concept that captures the compromise to be made between two competing priorities: the necessity to copy the original template (replication) and the need to adapt it (innovation) to the reality of the new context.

The topic of transfer has been explored in the routines literature as an understanding that routines are practices with internal dynamics. The work of Feldman and Pentland (2003) is a cornerstone in this discipline as they adapted Latour’s distinction between ostensive and performative to build their theory. It suggests a recursive relationship between actors’ understanding of routines (the ostensive aspect) and their actual performances of routines (the performative aspect). Their theoretical shift highlights the dynamic that contributes to both stability and change in organizations (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). Because the ostensive aspect embodies what we often refer to as the structure, it enables actors “to guide, account for, and refer to specific performances of a routine.” However, the performative aspect as an expression of the “specific actions, by specific people, at specific times and places” brings the routine to life by creating, maintaining, and modifying the ostensive aspect of the routine. For Becker (2004), this ostensive/performative articulation reconciles an apparently major source of confusion in the literature, where routines are understood both as activity patterns and as cognitive patterns. This ostensive/performative dynamic highlights the nature of the linkages between the cognitive and the behavioral levels. It also provides a new theoretical lens when studying micro-level processes of replication (Feldman, 2000; Feldman & Pentland, 2003; Pentland & Feldman, 2005).

Drawing on both this dynamic understanding of routines and the observation that existing studies on routines transfer had mainly focused on simple organizations, D’Adderio (2014) developed the dynamic aspect of replication dilemma. Based on a case study in an “unstable and fast changing context,” she investigated an innovative high-tech organization where the need to copy exactly is essential. In this case, she presented a more complex organization that learned to address the replication dilemma; its organization members and the artifacts they used maintained a dynamic balance by reaching different goals (replication or improvement) on separate occasions in order to respond to coexisting pressures for innovation and replication.

Having highlighted the central role of socio-materiality in routine replication, D’Adderio (2008, 2011), recognizing the multiplicity of organizational contexts, called for a broader understanding of the replication phenomenon.

Indeed, when Baden-Fuller and Winter (2005) examined the motivation behind the knowledge transfer for a replication process, they found that organizations adopt two different strategies: replication by principles and replication by template. The two strategies are structured around the “why” question. While replication by principle tends to explain the reason why and leave imitators some freedom to rely on their own way of doing things, replication by template perceives the why question as a “pitfall” and concentrates on how to copy exactly. Moreover, recent literature suggests that current research has essentially understood routines as, at best, an aggregation of single routines (Deken, Carlile, Berends, & Lauche, 2016; Kremser & Schreyögg, 2016) explaining that organizational outputs are mainly achieved through multiple and closely interacting routines (Kremser & Schreyögg, 2016).

Based on this literature corpus, the situation of replication by principle that considers routines multiplicity still needs to be investigated. We respond to this call for research into the transfer of multiple interrelated routines by using the case of remounting a ballet from a managerial perspective.

In the ballet world, being able to remount an artistic work in another context while maintaining its artistic integrity in performance is a fundamental issue for the recipient company’s reputation and viability. We approach a ballet production as a composite of choreographic routines, musical routines, and design routines, where remounting the show in another context requires close attention to be paid to intimate linkage of the routines. Because the new context necessitates adjustments to performative patterns, if these occur in isolation, the rest of the interrelated choreographic, musical, or design routines are affected disastrously.

We thus present another aspect of the replication dilemma in a context where routines are interrelated and where replication is a replication of intent.

In this specific type of organizational context, even if replication by principle ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Routine Dynamics in Action
• Chapter 1. Remounting a Ballet in a Different Context: A Complementary Understanding of Routines Transfer Theories
• Chapter 2. Transferring Routines Across Multiple Boundaries: A Flexible Approach
• Chapter 3. Copying Routines for New Venture Creation: How Replication Can Support Entrepreneurial Innovation
• Chapter 4. >Interdependence Within and Between Routines: A Performative Perspective
• Chapter 5. The Dark Side of Routine Dynamics: Deceit and the Work of Romeo Pimps
• Chapter 6. Making New Strategic Moves Possible: How Executive Management Enacts Strategizing Routines to Strengthen Entrepreneurial Agility
• Chapter 7. The Role of Multiple Points of View in Non-Envisioned Routine Creation: Taking Initiative, Creating Connections, and Coping with Misalignments
• Chapter 8. Learning a New Ecology of Space and Looking for New Routines: Experimenting Robotics in a Surgical Team
• Chapter 9. Enacting Relational Expertise to Change Professional Routines in Technology-Mediated Service Settings
• Index