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The void at the heart of rules: routines in the context of rule-following

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Bénédicte Reynaud

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Abstract

This paper is an attempt to understand how rules operate in organisations. I focus on the links between organisational routines and rules that are defined as incomplete since they come to their application. I analyse the role of routines in managing the incompleteness of rules. I present a case study where management introduced a productivity bonus in the middle of 1992. This allows to study in what extent the new rule modifies the prevailing routines of work organisation. Based on team observations, interviews, and statistics that I carried out over a period of nine years (1992-2000), I show that in an initial period, the productivity bonus has partially biased the tasks selection process. In a second period - "the normal period" - our observations indicate that following the rules consists in translating the abstract rules into concrete reference points, and adding in what the rules have not specified. The translation process conducts to a routine since the interpretation is stabilised. Routines provide a pragmatic, local, and temporary solution to the incompleteness of rules. Since routines emerge only in the course of action, they come with no guarantee of success. That constitutes their dynamic.

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Paper provided by PSE (Ecole normale supérieure) in its series PSE Working Papers with number 2005-08.

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Date of creation: 2005
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Handle: RePEc:pse:psecon:2005-08

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References listed on IDEAS
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  1. Richard R. Nelson, 1995. "Recent Evolutionary Theorizing about Economic Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 48-90, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Gersick, Connie J. G. & Hackman, J. Richard, 1990. "Habitual routines in task-performing groups," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 65-97, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Massimo Egidi, 1995. "Routines, Hierarchies of Problems, Procedural Behaviour: Some Evidence fom Experiments," CEEL Working Papers 9503, Computable and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia. [Downloadable!]
  4. William G Egelhoff, 1991. "Information-Processing Theory and the Multinational Enterprise," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 341-368, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Markus C. Becker, 2004. "Organizational routines: a review of the literature," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(4), pages 643-678, August.
  6. Michael D. Cohen & Roger Burkhart & Giovanni Dosi & Massimo Egidi & Luigi Marengo & Massimo Warglien & Sidney Winter & with comments by Benjamin Coriat, 1995. "Routines and Other Recurring Action Patterns of Organizations: Contemporary Research Issues," Working Papers 95-11-101, Santa Fe Institute.
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  1. Nathalie Lazaric, 2007. "Are Routines Reducible or Mere Cognitive Automatisms? Some contributions from cognitive science to help shed light on change in routines," DRUID Working Papers 07-13, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies. [Downloadable!]
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