The Philosophy of Critical Realism—An Opportunity for Information Systems Research
Information Systems Frontiers
Emotion as a Connection of Physical Artifacts and Organizations
Organization Science
Mindfulness and the Quality of Organizational Attention
Organization Science
Technology choice and its performance: Towards a sociology of software package procurement
Information and Organization
Designing routines: On the folly of designing artifacts, while hoping for patterns of action
Information and Organization
Organizational Character: On the Regeneration of Camp Poplar Grove
Organization Science
Technological Embeddedness and Organizational Change
Organization Science
Representations and actions: the transformation of work practices with IT use
Information and Organization
The order of technology: Complexity and control in a connected world
Information and Organization
Design science in information systems research
MIS Quarterly
Sociomateriality - Taking the wrong turning?
Information and Organization
An integrative semiotic framework for information systems: The social, personal and material worlds
Information and Organization
Hi-index | 0.00 |
Drawing on the theory of organisational routines as generative systems, we deploy a critical realist approach based on Searle's philosophy of language to analyse the generative mechanisms that specify the pre-conditions for recognisable, repetitive patterns of interdependent activities. Using the example of the organisational routines implemented in Germany to monitor the allocation and disbursement of the European Social Fund, we contend that constitutive rules of the type ''X counts as Y in context C'' are at the very centre of organisational routines. Such rules consist of generative mechanisms that account for the emergence of the ostensive aspects of organisational routines out of artefacts and/or procedures in a social structure of power relations. We further claim that, far from being proxies for the ostensive aspects of routines, artefacts whether tangible or intangible are instantiations of such ostensive aspects on a par with any other performative aspects of routines. On this basis, a re-conceptualisation and a re-labelling of the ostensive and performative aspects of routines are proposed. The former are the result of the activation of systems of constitutive rules, i.e. actual routines in critical realist terminology, the latter are patterns of interdependent activities instantiating the ostensive aspects of routines, i.e. empirical routines in critical realist terminology. Implications for theory and practice are discussed by developing a model of organisational routines that interweaves extant research streams.