Organizations and Markets

| Nicolai Foss |

Here is a blog offer: Teppo Felin and I have written “Organizational Routines: Historical Drift, A Course Correction, and Future Directions,” and if you mail me at njf.smg@cbs.dk, I will be happy to send you a copy.  Here is the abstract:

Organizational routines and capabilities have become key constructs not only in evolutionary economics, but more recently also in business administration, specifically strategic management. In this essai we discuss the historical origins of the notion of routines, and highlight some of the theoretical and definitional drift associated with the notion of routines over time.  In parallel we also explicate some of the underlying theoretical problems of routines (and related concepts); problems such as the lack of clarity on the origins of routines, and the more general need for micro-foundations. We argue that individual-level considerations deserve more attention in extant work — we in effect call for a course–correction in work on organizational routines — and we argue that evolutionary economics and strategic management should aim to build micro-foundations related to understanding the origins of routines.