Organizational Routines as Grammars of Action

The authors wish to thank Stephen Barley, Michael Cohen, Connie Gersick, Barbara Lawrence, Lance Sandelands, Robert Sutton, Burt Swanson, Karl Weick, Elaine Yakura, and the anonymous ASO reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We would also like to thank Linda Pike for her editorial advice, and Louise Soe and Sidne Ward for their help with the data analysis. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Management Meeting, Las Vegas, August 1992. This paper explores the sequential structure of work processes in a task unit whose work involves high numbers of exceptions, low analyzability of search, frequent interruptions, and extensive deliberation and that cannot be characterized as routine under any traditional definition. Yet a detailed analysis of the sequential pattern of action in a sample of 168 service interactions reveals that most interactions follow a repetitive, functionally similar pattern. This apparent contradiction presents a challenge to our theoretical understanding of routines: How can apparently nonroutine work display such a high degree of regularity? To answer this question, we propose a new definition of organizational routines as a set of functionally similar patterns and illustrate a new methodology for studying the sequential structure of work processes using rule-based grammatical models. This approach to organizational routines juxtaposes the structural features of the organization against the reflective agency of organizational members. Members enact specific performances from among a constrained, but potentially large set of possibilities that can be described by a grammar, giving rise to the regular patterns of action we label routines.'