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The effortful process of routines emergence: the interplay of entrepreneurial actions and artefacts

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Abstract

Despite recent calls for processual analysis of routines creation, little work has been done to investigate the entrepreneurial mechanisms that explain the creation and adoption of new routines. This paper provides a processual contribution to the study of organizational routines by proposing a model for routine creation, based on an analysis of collective entrepreneurial actions. Using an entrepreneurial bricolage lens, we show how agents, during the creation of new routines, develop mechanisms to adapt firm processes, enact external constraints and validate novel practices. Our analysis is based on a three-year collaborative study in a French biotechnology firm. We develop a processual model of routine creation comprising three phases: scanning, performing and adopting. The model provides new insights into the interplay between artefacts and entrepreneurial actions in the creation of new routines.

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Notes

  1. Technological paradigms are the scientific principles and technology that apply to a given industry; they are“… as a ‘pattern’ of solution of selected techno economic problems based on highly selected principles derived from that natural sciences, jointly with specific rules aimed to acquire new knowledge and safeguard it […] A technological paradigm is both an exemplar – an artifact that is to be developed and improved …and a set of heuristics” (Dosi 1988: 1127), and show how these ‘heuristics’ are embodied in organizational routines.

  2. Registration refers to the process involved in firms obtaining regulatory approvals to sell their products.

  3. The term ‘dossier’ is used by the regulatory authorities and by practitioners to describe the documents that firms submit to obtain product or substance approval.

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Correspondence to Aura Parmentier-Cajaiba.

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This paper provides a processual contribution to the study of organizational routines by proposing a model for routine creation, based on an analysis of collective entrepreneurial actions. Using an entrepreneurial bricolage lens, we show how agents, during the creation of new routines, develop mechanisms to adapt firm processes, enact external constraints and validate novel practices. Our analysis is based on a three-year collaborative study in a French biotechnology firm. We develop a processual model of routine creation comprising three phases: scanning, performing and adopting.

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Parmentier-Cajaiba, A., Lazaric, N. & Cajaiba-Santana, G. The effortful process of routines emergence: the interplay of entrepreneurial actions and artefacts. J Evol Econ 31, 33–63 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-020-00691-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-020-00691-7

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