The Evolutivity Of Organizational Routines: A New Conceptualization Of Their Performativity And Their Relation To Information Technologies

The ability to adapt to a changing environment is necessary for the survival of organizations. The evolutivity of organizational routines is therefore a fundamental issue for both theorists and practitioners. In this "theory building" paper, we adopt a variance perspective and a process perspective to meet this issue. In a variance perspective, by analyzing the contingency of results of the literature to characteristics of the different routines studied, we propose four dimensions to characterize the routines and estimate their evolution potential (interdependence, reflexivity, temporality and regulations). In a process perspective, we seek to better theorize the immediate causes of action in order to describe and understand the evolutivity of routines. To do this, we propose a reinterpretation of the Pentland and Feldman (2003; 2005) model by the paradigm of critical realism. Our investigations lead us to recognize the threefold nature of routines (behavioral, cognitive and material) and to better appreciate the role of information technologies in organizational routines: IT are a source of recurring agencies on this triple ontology. More than ever, the organization and information technologies must be thought together.