Routines during an organizational change: a study on dynamics and its effects

In their quest for deeper insight into organizations, for some years now a great deal of researchers have focused on the concept of routines. Routines enable researchers to make out some of the dynamics which govern the organization, by fostering stability or , on the contrary, favoring development and change. The present paper proposes a case study which will enable us to portray two sets of routines whose dynamic and effects prove worthy of consideration. In fact, an exogenous event compels an organization to change its aims and its habits. This change triggers a break in the albeit proven set of routines within the organization. Those of the executive managers adapt themselves to new objectives without adopting the mindset, whereas most operatives become the symbol of resistance to change so plunging themselves into uncertainty, jeopardizing their identity and the meaning of their everyday situation. By means of this case, we underline how desires for openness, exchange and dialogue meant to nurture the conditions of change get bogged down, sabotaged and become useless in the daily interplay of force and opposition that the project itself engenders. Finally we will underline how this dynamic also produces effects as much upon the individuals exposed to the paradoxes that it induces as upon the organization whose coherence and integrity is gradually being whittled away.