Proceedings of Olkc 2007 – " Learning Fusion " Contested Practices in Routines

Routine activities are often contrasted with flexible, creative, unpredictable, improvised actions. However, can flexible and innovative responses to new challenges be born entirely outside of routines? Flexibility within routines has recently attracted the attention of researchers in organizational theory. An overview of the various theories how to build flexibility into routines demonstrates new developments and a long overdue revision of theoretical frameworks. It is then argued that these insights build on a dichotomy in routines. The dichotomy consists of a “split” between an operational level and a formal rule-like level. It is argued that numerous problems are connected with this distinction. We propose that the view on routines should be narrowed down to a definition of a routine as a pattern. In a comparison between routines and scripts we are able to identify the necessary preconditions for flexibility. We assume that a routine defined as a pattern puts an actor always in an ambiguous position. He or she has to choose between inconsistent positions and incommensurable values, which can only be solved by situated, local, concrete human practice involving improvisation. There can be no general covering law with deductive rules resulting in an algorithm, which could be frozen into internalized guide to actions. A practice-based view of action within an incompletely “closed” routine can explain both – flexibility and stability in the pattern of a routine. We illustrate this practice-based view with a preliminary case study of a budgeting routine in a public organization.