Routines and networks: strengthening a missed link

This paper aims at understanding how and why managers can mobilize networks for creating and modifying organizational routines. We mobilize both routines and social capital corpus associated to structuration theory to deepened understanding on how networks are deployed and further used for elaborating and modifying organizational routines. Our research is based on a 3-year in-depth engaged study in a small firm pertaining to European biopesticide industry confronted to developing a registration capability. This process led to routine creation and modification through managerial agency. This study brings insights on how social capital plays a role in the elaboration and modification of routines related to social structures imposed to the firm. We provide a model that articulates social structure, social system and social capital. It provides a recursive and dialogical perspective of structures and social capital as a carrier for creating and modifying routines conceptualized as a social system. Results show that the modification or creation of routines is oriented by how the manager perceives it as legitimate by specific ties. It also shows that the elaboration of a bundle of routine can be supported by external networks that are not initially part of the firm resources. These networks provide diverse kind of resources such as information, human resources, and procedures. But more important, they are also a medium for legitimating both routines and associated actions.