Routines.Research.Community Workshop

September 28-30, 2022

Linz, Austria

(Routines.Research.Community)

Purpose of the Workshop

Routine Dynamics research started more than twenty years ago inspired by the fascinating insight that routines are often not as rigid and inert as everyone assumed. Conceptualizing routines as dynamic patterns of action has far reaching implications for how we think about organizations and management. It essentially means that our managerial strategies and plans–no matter how well-wrought they may seem–often lead to changes and dynamics that were neither intended nor expected. It therefore suggests a more rather than less adaptive management style, and a manager who can sense, leverage and give direction to emergent dynamics rather than trying to develop a perfect plan upfront.

The recently published Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics provides a comprehensive compendium of the past 20 years of research on Routine Dynamics. So we ask: What’s next? What are the possible futures of Routine Dynamics? The purpose of the 12th Routines.Research.Community meeting is to start not one, but many new conversations. And as true Routine Dynamics scholars, we turn our attention to what is happening right here and right now in doing so. And right now we see massive challenges and opportunities driven by societal and environmental transformations, new political movements, or the ever-increasing information processing power of digital technologies. All of these developments will likely impact the ways in which we work, communicate and organize ourselves. But we have yet to understand how.

Central Themes of the Workshop

More Digital? Digital technologies–such as AI or digital surveillance technologies–have been triggering some of the most important socio-cultural transformations of our times. How do these technologies afford new ways of working and organizing? And how can we enrich our research through the ever increasing amounts of digital traces?

More Critical? As a society, we are increasingly confronted with more or less grand challenges that are the result of our own doings. As routines researchers, we can follow calls to study themes like sustainability, diversity and inclusion, as well as to critical theories of organizing. What role do routines play for their continuity? And how can we address grand challenges by changing routines?

More Open? Openness in all of its forms, like Open Strategy, Open Organizing, Open Innovation, Open Science, or Open Data becomes an increasingly relevant concern for scholars and practitioners alike. How are dynamic routines implied in crossing knowledge, social, and temporal boundaries in order to open up the organization to new audiences, ideas, and resources?

We have the great pleasure to explore these questions together with a number of renowned scholars who will enrich our conversations.

We look forward to seeing you all in Linz.

Waldemar Kremser, Thomas Grisold and Kathrin Sele

For regular updates and information about our network join us on ResearchGate:

https://www.researchgate.net/project/RoutinesResearchCommunity