Digital Intensity and Variety in Design Routines

Design routines are increasingly digitalized, but it is not clear whether this increased digital intensity will reduce, increase, or have no effect on routine variation. In this paper we report on a study of design routines across four organizational contexts to understand the effect of digital intensity on routine variation. By developing a view grounded in the Law of Requisite Variety, we sketch the foundation for the effect of theory of digital intensity on the “configural” variety of routines. That is, the variation associated with the socio-technical components of those routines. We test hypotheses through the application of a novel computational sequence analysis technique of four theoretically-sampled, world class organizations that design industrial products, semiconductor chips, software, and innovative buildings. Our findings suggest that digital intensity reduces configural variety in design routines in general and that this effect is moderated by different aspects of the design context. This research contributes to theoretical work on digitalization and design routines, contributes two new constructs and their operationalization (digital intensity and configural variety), and applies a novel computational mixed-methods approach.