Bringing People Back in: How Group Internal Social Capital Influences Routines' Emergence

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12100

Bringing People Back in: How Group Internal

Social Capital Influences Routines’Emergence

CAROLINE SARGIS-ROUSSEL,

1

CÉCILE BELMONDO

2

and FRANÇOIS DELTOUR

3

1

IESEG School of Managemen t (LEM CNRS 9221), France

2

IAE Institute, University of Lille (LEM CNRS 9221), France

3

Mines Nantes Engineering School (LEMNA 4272), France

This research explores the micro-dynamics by which routines emerge. By considering group’s internal social

capital as an antecedent of routines’emergence, we acknowledge the motivational and relational aspects that the

practice perspective on routines tends to neglect. We propose a theoretical model that depicts how each dimension

of social capital (structural, cognitive, and relational) affects the emergence of both performative and ostensive

aspects of routines, and discuss its inner dynamics. Our contribution to the practice perspective is twofold. First,

we analyse how the structure, content, and nature of interpersonal interactions affect routines’emergence at a

collective leveland insist on the participants’motivations to sustain heedful interrelations andeffortful achievement.

Second, we address the temporality of routines’emergence by discussing the co-evolution of social capital and

routines, and its impact on the potential for routines’endogenous evolution.

Keywords: routines’emergence; social capital; routine dynamics; routinization; motivation; interpersonal

relationships; practice perspective

Introduction

As ‘repetitive, recognizable patterns of interdependent

actions, carried out by multiple actors’(Feldman and

Pentland, 2003: 95), routines help explain both the

efficiency of collective action and the achievement of

organizational goals. Two different streams of research

on routines have developed thus far (Parmigiani and

Howard-Grenville, 2011; Turner, 2014). At the macro

level, the capability perspective focuses primarily on the

consequences of routines on organizational performance

and considers routines as black boxes that explain

organizational stability and efficiency (Cyert and March,

1963; Nelson andWinter, 1982), possibly to the detriment

of efficacy and adaptation (Kyriakopoulos and De Ruyter,

2004; Lazaric, 2008). In contrast, the practice perspective

adopts a micro-level stance to study how routines might

generate both stability and change through their

endogenous evolution (Feldman and Pentland, 2003;

Pentland and Feldman, 2005; Feldman et al.,2016).

Although scholars address the origins and evolution of

organizational routines and capabilities at the macro level

(Zollo and Winter, 2002; Romme et al.,2010),westill

need to develop our knowledge about how andwhy they

emerge at the micro level(Salvato and Rerup, 2011; Witt,

2011; Bapujiet al., 2012; Felin et al., 2012).Yet this is not

a trivial question: routines involve multiple actors who

may be unevenly willing to participate or not share the

same vision of the routine (Feldman and Rafaeli, 2002;

Howard-Grenville, 2005; Turner and Rindova, 2012;

Spee et al., 2016). Two groups thus might not achieve

the same degree of routinization or the same pace of

routines’emergence, due to such differences between

their participants.

Research at the micro level also shows that routines’

emergence is a learning process that involves adaptations

of the declarative and procedural knowledge held by

participants (Cohen and Bacdayan, 1994; Lazaric and

Denis, 2005). Studies in the practice perspective on

routines focus on the processes by which individual

learning occurs, adopting an individualistic view of

routines (Geiger, 2009), whereas routines are carried out

collectively. Moreover, prior research tends to regard

participants as neutral or anonymous (Cohendet and

Llerena, 2008), limiting our ability to understand

participants’intrinsic motivation to participate, and

focusing on external antecedents of routines’emergence

(e.g., environmental features, organizational structure,

Correspondence: François Deltour, Mines Nantes Engineering School,

4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44307 Nantes, France. E-mail: francois.

deltour@mines-nantes.fr

European Management Review, Vol. 14, 101–112, (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12100

©2016 European Academy of Management