Given the centrality of experiential learning in the Carnegie School, we focus on how this form of learning provides an opportunity for deepening the relationship between the Carnegie School and Routine Dynamics. Experiential learning is central to Routine Dynamics because the flow and progression of routines emerge from experiential learning like processes of taking action, evaluating the results of those actions, and, if necessary, making adjustments to future actions.

This chapter offers an introduction to Routine Dynamics as a particular approach to studying organizational phenomena. We provide a brief description of the genealogy of research on routines; starting with the work of the management scholar Fredrick Taylor (1911) and the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey (1922) at the beginning of the last century, to the works of the Carnegie School on standard operating procedures around the middle of the last century, to the economics-based Capabilities approach and finally the practice-based approach of Routine Dynamics around the turn of the century. We also discuss the advantages of conceptualizing patterns of action as “routines”, as compared to “practices”, “processes”, “activities” or “institutions”. In particular, we highlight that the concept of routines directs the researcher’s attention to certain specificities of particular action patterns, such as task orientation, sequentiality of actions, recurrence and familiarity as well as attempts at reflexive regulation. We also introduce and explain the key concepts of the Routine Dynamics perspective and how they have developed over time.

This chapter contributes to understanding the possible impacts of China’s Cyber Security Law once that law is fully implemented, as it concludes that Chinese authorities conduct an ongoing cost–benefit analysis in evaluating data localisation policies and practices, and that this partly explains China’s delay in implementing the data localisation provisions within the law. This is also consistent with the longstanding practice of the Chinese government to create fuzzy logic laws in areas of rapid change in order to allow for flexibility in implementation depending on the milieu. The costs and benefits of data localisation vary over time, requiring continual re-evaluation; hence, the laws can be implemented and reinterpreted in line with fuzzy logic. In particular, what is meant by ‘important data’ can be changed according to the policy considerations outlined in this chapter.

In this chapter, we shed light on bodies in the dynamics of routines. Though the body has just begun to be theorized in Routine Dynamics research, the body is, nonetheless, pervasive. We show how ubiquitous the bodies are in Routine Dynamics research by documenting the embodied orientation to and from performing, to and from patterns, and to and from situation or materiality in 13 reference articles. By exploring one of these articles in more depth, we show how theorizing the body more explicitly has potential for deepening our understanding of the processual mechanisms of routine dynamics.

In this chapter, we review routine dynamics research through a temporal lens. Providing an overview of this work, the chapter focuses on two aspects of routine temporality: the effects of time — subjective, intersubjective, and objective — on routine performance, and the development and evolution of routines over time. Based on the review, we discuss how a focus on temporality expands the research agenda for a number of core themes and questions in routine dynamics research.

In this chapter, we consider the embeddedness of organizational routines within their organizational contexts, drawing on the original work on this construct (Howard-Grenville, 2005), revisiting its core ideas, and reviewing subsequent work that has addressed routine embeddedness. We find that recent work has highlighted the importance of understanding routine dynamics as influenced by and potentially mutually constitutive with other generative aspects of organizational life. We end with calls for future research on this topic and encourage scholars to further explore how routines interact with other core aspects of organizing.

This chapter explains the extent of fuzzy logic law surrounding the legal structure of technology companies in China. The chapter provides a profound illustration of the environment in which Chinese entrepreneurs must operate and remains an ongoing story. From the outset, Chinese technology entrepreneurs must decide how to legally structure their companies in order to account for vague conceptions of legality.

Fuzzy logic is used by the Chinese government to balance its competing interests in creating an environment that is conducive to innovation and assisting its Network Sovereignty agenda. The book concludes that data localisation laws, which form part of China’s Cyber Security Law, will not (once the law is finalised) have a major impact on open-source AI innovation. This is because the ‘fuzzy logic’ regulatory approach, consistent with prior Chinese regulatory practice, is being employed by the Chinese authorities in selectively implementing these laws to avoid negatively affecting AI development. In short, the Chinese authorities, in presiding over contradictory policy and regulatory decisions that may inhibit technological advancement in China, apply this approach to flexibly navigate those policies – and frequently to defer any conclusive decision-making to a future time (perhaps indefinitely). This is why many legal documents, including both the Cyber Security Law and its implementing rules and regulations, use intentionally vague language around data transfers and security verification and testing; this gives the government broad discretion, allowing for a spectrum of enforcement actions between promoting innovation and maintaining control.

This Chapter discusses the potential and relevance of a practice perspective on management that sees routines and the dynamics of routines as an essential focus of managerial engagement. The Routine Dynamics research program has opened the door for this view on management, to understand how management shapes stability and change in organizations. The Chapter presents studies on the role of management in enacting routine performance, in reflecting routine dynamics, and in mobilizing specific settings to creating and changing routines. Furthermore, the study of management routines, essential for stability and change in managerial engagement itself, has recently gained attention, in the context of the Strategy-as-Practice research program. We explore the current state and identify promising opportunities for future research

In the strategic management tradition, dynamic capabilities are interpreted as grounded in high-level routines, while in the routine dynamics framework routines are seen as inherently dynamic. Despite the apparent convergence of constructs and interests, these two approaches to understanding routines and the dynamism that they embody and engender have not been building on each other. In this chapter I analyse commonalities and differences between the two views in relation to their ontologies, their focal interests, and their levels of theory, measurement and analysis. I also describe how the two views contribute—although from different angles—to answering the same questions on routines emergence and change, on their role in inhibiting and promoting creativity and novelty, and in maintaining pattern and variety. Finally, I provide directions for future research on routine participants, ecologies of routines, and routines performance, which build on both views, without necessarily integrating them.

In this chapter, we compare Routine Dynamics and Strategy as Practice based on an extended literature review. Routine Dynamics and Strategy as Practice are distinctive communities of thought in organization studies that exhibit a number of striking parallels: both subscribe to the overall “practice turn” in the social sciences, seek to bring the human being back in, and focus predominantly on the level of action involved in organizational routines and strategy, respectively. In our comparison of similarities and differences of Routine Dynamics and Strategy as Practice, we focus on their empirical domains, underlying theoretical perspectives, research frameworks, levels of analysis, and empirical methods employed. Based on that, we discuss what Routine Dynamics can learn from Strategy as Practice and vice versa. We conclude with some general reflections on the future relation between the two research communities and develop an agenda for future research that facilitates cross-fertilizations between the two research communities.

This chapter demonstrates the extent of the data protection problems in China, and the public’s growing concern about loss of privacy and abuse of their personal data. It proceeds to show that under China’s Cyber Security Law, the government has responded to this issue by strengthening ‘data protection’ from abuse by private companies but without shielding ‘data privacy’ from government intervention. In particular, enforced real-name user registration for online services potentially allows the Chinese government to demand access to the local data of any person who uses an online service in China, for national security or criminal investigation purposes. The chapter argues that this internal contradiction within the Cyber Security Law – increased data protection while demanding real-name user registration – may also benefit AI development. This is due, in part, to the vagueness of key terms within the Cyber Security Law, and the accompanying fuzzy logic within the Privacy Standards issued under that law, which allow both tech firms and government regulators considerable discretion in how they comply with and enforce data protection provisions. In the final part of the chapter, it is argued that due to the potential benefits of AI in solving serious governance problems, the Chinese government will only selectively enforce the data privacy provisions in the Cyber Security Law, seeking to prevent commercial abuse without hindering useful technological advances.

The development of routine dynamics entails both a theoretical shift and changes in methodology. Agent-based modelling (ABM) offers an approach to enriching our understandings of routine dynamics from the ‘bottom-up’. This chapter provides an overview of ABM methodology in routine dynamics research. It includes a comparison of the eleven contemporary agent-based models (ABMs) selected from literature, a summary of research challenges and reflections on future work. As this chapter shows, we can differentiate ABMs in routine dynamics based on levels of analysis and concrete research questions. Further, developing empirically grounded ABMs will be a challenging but worthwhile effort.

This chapter explains the contribution of Routines Dynamics to the topic of transfer and routine replication. In order to do so, we adopt a chronological presentation of existing studies and describe the concept of routine replication. We identify two strands to study the replication of routines, each of them conceptualizing routine replication differently: First, in a foundational phase, very much inspired by traditional economic theories, the focus is on how existing routines are reproduced efficiently across multiple sites of a given organization. In such a static perspective that dominates most of the past century approaches, routine transfer is viewed as the production of a new routine that is as much as possible similar to the original routine. Second, in a phase that followed the transformational understanding of routine by Feldman and Pentland in the early 2000, routines are no longer characterized as stable but driven by internal dynamics that contribute to both stability and change in organizations. In such a perspective, the focus has been placed on routine re-creation, more than replication, and on the active role of actors who alter routines in order to make them fit into a new target environment.

Video is helping to enlarge our scholarly conversations about theoretical issues such as embodiment, materiality, and interactivity. Video methods are relatively new to the field of management and organizational studies, which is an opportunity for researchers to look anew at organizational routines and routine dynamics. This chapter shows how video can capture the recurring patterns of human activity that are a hallmark of organizational routines. Moreover, video can capture the audible and visible details of routine dynamics or changes to recurring patterns of organizational activity. Sometimes video methods are tricky. Sometimes seemingly simple cinematic and analytic decisions fundamentally clash with a researcher’s epistemological and ontological assumptions. This chapter helps guide researchers who may be new to video methods by reviewing existing literature on video methods and routine dynamics and providing a demonstration of how video data can be used to study routine dynamics.