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School leadership was transformed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. In this crisis, principals organised schooling amidst extreme confusion and uncertainty. Using sensemaking theory to capture how leaders identified, interpreted, and acted on this novel situation, this longitudinal qualitative study describes how school leaders, in interaction with stakeholders, generated understanding during the pandemic. We draw particular attention to a set of actors – parents – who elevated their participation in education broadly and sensemaking specifically in ways that have yet to be explored in other educational research. We examine the active role parents played in shaping educational decisions, their interaction with school leadership, and the growing polarisation exacerbated by the deepening political crisis that frames the field of education more generally. Our findings highlight how school leaders and parents held competing beliefs about how schools should be organised, leading to a process of what we call sensesplitting, the growth of two narratives emerging out of the same phenomena. This study offers important insight into how organisational sensemaking in education is increasingly shaped by parents, politics, and school leadership and the impact of this shift on leaders' decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, Estonian schools have received more decision-making powers to manage learning and teaching, and teachers have more responsibility over the principles of student assessment and disciplinary policy in school curriculum areas (Kukemelk & Kitsing, 2020). Schools compile their own curricula based on Estonia's National Curriculum. Each school has a different curriculum, which serves as the basis for all learning-related activities (Põhikooli- ja gümnaasiumiseadus, 2010). Previous research has indicated that education policy pushes school principals toward innovative initiatives for school improvement (Eisenschmidt et al., 2021), and teachers are characterised by low curriculum ownership (Viirpalu et al., 2022). Curriculum development is essential in a school that strives to enhance teaching and learning and requires organisational routines to facilitate leadership for learning and ensure teacher collaboration. School improvement goals defined in school improvement plans set the direction of improvement that a school is taking and lead to more coherent organisational practices that result in more focused, specific, and consistent teaching practices in classrooms (Meyer et al., 2020). Curriculum leadership is crucial to enhancing teaching and learning. According to Wai-Yan Wan & Leung (2022), curriculum leadership has been decentralised, and the focus on the school principal has shifted to a multitude of forms of teacher collaboration and collective teacher decision-making processes. Therefore, the interactions among school leaders and teachers need a frame and structure that can be characterised by organisational routines as repetitive, recognisable patterns of interdependent actions involving multiple actors (Feldman & Pentland, 2003, p. 95). Previous studies (e.g. Liljenberg et al., 2017, Binkhorst et al., 2015) about school improvement routines revealed the lack of well-designed routines for principals to implement a well-established idea of pedagogical leadership and to collaborate with teacher teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kooli arengueesmärkide elluviimisel on oluline roll kooli õppekavaarendusel, kuid pole teada, kuivõrd organisatsiooni tegevusmustrid arengukava ja õppekava seoseid toetavad. Uuringu eesmärk on välja selgitada, kuidas toetavad kooli õppekavaarenduse eestvedamise rutiinid kooli arengueesmärkide elluviimist. Uurisime, (1) millised on kooli õppekavaarendusega seotud arengueesmärgid; (2) kuidas mõistab juhtmeeskond õppekava kooli arengueesmärkide elluviimisel; ja (3) millised õppekavaarenduse eestvedamise rutiinid on koolis kujunenud. Seitsme kooli juhtumiuuringu põhjal selgus, et arengueesmärkides domineerivad õppekava rakendamise eesmärgid ja õppekava hindamine on vähesel määral eesmärgistatud. Kooli juhtmeeskondade arusaamades on segadus õppekava rollist kooliarenduses. Uuritud koolides on õppekavaarenduse eestvedamise rutiinid, mis tagavad ülesannete delegeerimise. Samas ei toimi õpetajate koostöö õppekavaarenduses piisavalt. Summary

Studies on routine dynamics have argued that as organisational routines are not static and can change endogenously, routines are a source of organisational flexibility and not inertia. However, most studies have taken only single routines as the unit of analysis. This study extends this stream of research by examining multiple routines; drawing on insights from different streams of research, this study furthers our knowledge of multiple-routine dynamics. The aim is to examine whether multiple organisational routines that change endogenously lead to organisational inertia. It argues that even if we take the perspective of routine dynamics research that single routines can change endogenously, multiple routines can be a source of organisational inertia and, thus, impede organisational adaptation, which was overlooked in prior studies. Endogenous change makes routines sub-optimal over time, which increases coordination costs among multiple routines, leading to organisational inertia. The study explores the potential downside of multiple routine dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines which school factors schools report influence their (dis)continuation of lesson study, a professional development initiative, and how after a four-year, cross-school lesson study project ends. To examine this, the framework on three types of school factors (features of employment, malleable school processes and fixed school characteristics) and the concept of organisational routines are used. Semistructured interviews were held with 21 teachers and 15 school leaders from the 14 schools who participated in the project. Findings show schools reported nine school factors that influenced their (dis)continuation of lesson study after the project: five features of employment (part-time appointment, turnover, (un)planned leave of absence, work location and beginning teachers), three malleable processes (policies on improvement, scheduling and school finances), and one fixed school characteristic (school size). School factors were reported to constrain schools from making lesson study a repeated practice in the school, performing its core features, and ensuring collective attendance. Two narrative portraits revealed that the simultaneous occurrence of school factors made continuing with lesson study especially complex and limited schools' ability to move beyond shortened and simplified initiatives to more rich and meaningful professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workarounds are adaptive processes occurring in a centralised system environment. As adaptations, they expose organisations to potential data issues, for example, data availability, data accuracy, and data leak. Hence organisations need to manage workaround, one way to achieve this is to classify them. However, classifying workarounds is challenging because they are unique and situational. This study aims to develop a workaround classification by leveraging the theory of organisational routines. By adopting the theory's ontology, we emphasise the duality of structure (ostensive) and agency (performative). Next, we construct a truth table to progress our assumptions around workarounds. Our analysis shapes the statement of two organisational routines infused definitions of a workaround. This definition facilitates a new workaround typology based on organisational routines. By opening the black box, we can leverage a novel approach to classifying workarounds. This classification provides researchers with alternate building blocks for further theory development in workarounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the performance of construction projects, the use of relational contracting (e.g. Project Partnering, Alliancing, Early Contractor Involvement, Integrated Project Delivery) has increased among public clients in the last few decades. Despite widespread use, there are still large variations in contracting arrangements. In addition, the outcome of relational contracting remains unpredictable. The aim of this paper is to investigate how these variations may originate from internal dynamics and practices in the project-based client organisation. Adapting organisational routines as an analytical lens, the study investigates the pre-procurement routine applied to develop project-specific relational contracting models (e.g. contract schemes, reward systems, and award criteria) for large construction projects in the Swedish Transport Administration. The study contributes to research on organisational routines in project-based settings, illustrating how flexible enactment of a pre-procurement routine may balance two conflicting organisational goals: centralisation of procurement and project-level flexibility. However, while mitigating conflicting goals, the routine enactments create a variation in project-specific procurement models that hampers long-term goals of predictability and shared practices of relational contracting. Consequently, findings indicate that public clients seeking to transform contracting practices must increase their ability to develop procurement routines that can balance organisational goals and simultaneously benefit long-term goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic shifts, disruptive innovations, and competitive rivalries continuously reshape the operating environment of organisations. Such uncertainty impacts organisations and raises significant challenges. While many organisations tend to respond to uncertainty by adopting loss minimisation strategies, others see uncertainty as an opportunity to achieve gains. The latter view is exemplified in Taleb’s (2012) concept of ‘antifragility’, a property of systems that gain when exposed to uncertainty. For organisations, the challenge lies in the identification and execution of fundamental artefacts to accomplish work to achieve antifragile outcomes. One such artefact is the organisational routine; repeatable, regular patterns of behaviour and actions that influence performance. This paper conceptualises the intersection between antifragility, uncertainty management, and organisational routines literatures to identify four routine archetypes that can guide actions that contribute to organisational antifragility. Theoretically, this paper identifies how these archetypes arise from the interplay between temporal action (as tendencies towards proactive or reactive action) and risk mitigation strategies (as preference towards redundancies or flexibilities). Developed insights bring forth a foundation for predictive models of performance, and guidance for organisations aiming to thrive, rather than just survive, in uncertain environments. This paper concludes with the identification of further research avenues.

The study is a comprehensive introduction to the psychological version of the so-called microfoundational approach to routines. It focuses on the problem of how psychological micro-level phenomena and processes of individual actors affect the organisational macro-level of routines. More specifically, the study proposes to explain the sources of macro-level automatic stability and resourceful flexibility of routines by psychological habits and psychological flexibility. The approach presented in the study promises not only the level of detail that has not been present in extant investigations of routines research, but also a new account of the classic problem of the opposition between automaticity and flexibility of routines.

This article employs a sociomaterial perspective adapted from information systems and management studies to examine the potential impact of body worn cameras (BWCs) on police organisations. Based on 42 semi-structured interviews with police employees, the study illustrates how wearable camera technology is seen to 'afford' officers and agencies the ability to modify their work routines. Further, these modifications occur in conjunction with particular dimensions of body camera system's material agency. Through the performativity of video recording devices to move, see, hear, and record, officers report altering how they approach patrol work by displacing certain tasks onto their material associates, which allows them to better carry out their duties. Through the interoperability of the cloud storage systems, departments describe being able to reorganise critical information processing routines in support of criminal prosecutions. Through the objectivity of the digital files produced by body-worn camera systems, departments note effortlessly creating packets of events bearing the impression of truth and legitimacy with which they are able to more easily resolve citizen complaints. These findings underscore the importance of remaining attentive to the materiality of technology in policing and law enforcement research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is blazing with change and digital innovation is fuelling the fire. Process management can help channel the heat into useful work. Unfortunately, research on digital innovation and process management has been conducted by separate communities operating under orthogonal assumptions. We argue that a synthesis of assumptions is required to bring these streams of research together. We offer suggestions for how these assumptions can be updated to facilitate a convergent conversation between the two research streams. We also suggest ways that methodologies from each stream could benefit the other. Together with the three exemplar empirical studies included in the special issue on business process management and digital innovation, we develop a broader foundation for reinventing research on business process management in a world ablaze with digital innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background The handling of laboratory, imaging and other test results in UK general practice is a high-volume organisational routine that is both complex and high risk. Previous research in this area has focused on errors and harm, but a complementary approach is to better understand how safety is achieved in everyday practice. This paper ethnographically examines the role of informal dimensions of test results handling routines in the achievement of safety in UK general practice and how these findings can best be developed for wider application by policymakers and practitioners. Methods Non-participant observation was conducted of high-volume organisational routines across eight UK general practices with diverse organisational characteristics. Sixty-two semi-structured interviews were also conducted with the key practice staff alongside the analysis of relevant documents. Results While formal results handling routines were described similarly across the eight study practices, the everyday structure of how the routine should be enacted in practice was informally understood. Results handling safety took a range of local forms depending on how different aspects of safety were prioritised, with practices varying in terms of how they balanced thoroughness (i.e. ensuring the high-quality management of results by the most appropriate clinician) and efficiency (i.e. timely management of results) depending on a range of factors (e.g. practice history, team composition). Each approach adopted created its own potential risks, with demands for thoroughness reducing productivity and demands for efficiency reducing handling quality. Irrespective of the practice-level approach adopted, staff also regularly varied what they did for individual patients depending on the specific context (e.g. type of result, patient circumstances). Conclusions General practices variably prioritised a legitimate range of results handling safety processes and outcomes, each with differing strengths and trade-offs. Future safety improvement interventions should focus on how to maximise practice-level knowledge and understanding of the range of context-specific approaches available and the safeties and risks inherent in each within the context of wider complex system conditions and interactions. This in turn has the potential to inform new kinds of proactive, contextually appropriate approaches to intervention development and implementation focusing on the enhanced deliberation of the safety of existing high-volume routines.

It has long been suggested that charismatic species attract a disproportionate amount of attention and resources in international conservation. This paper follows up on this observation and investigates how cultural schemas and organisational routines shape resource allocation in conservation more broadly. Based on 44 in-depth interviews with programme managers in international conservation NGOs and in zoos with conservation programmes, we argue, that routines establishing units of intervention in conservation work shape the allocation of resources in ways that are not directly based on conservation science. In addition to the role of species, and charismatic species in particular, we examine the role of countries as units of interventions and of focus countries as privileged sites among them. Some countries present better opportunities than others; some are favored by institutional donors. We also discuss the role of landscapes and charismatic landscapes and of solutions and charismatic solutions.

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Much attention has been paid to the theoretical and empirical difficulties of identifying dynamic capability, given that it is a latent construct that is difficult to observe. There is consensus that dynamic capability should be defined so as to distinguish the capability for change from the change achieved: it is the organisation's capacity to change its resource base. But operationalising this idea has proven difficult. We propose an empirical representation based on a modest theoretical extension: the accepted definition implies that dynamic capability is constituted in organic engagement with the operating resources it is intended to change. This extension allows us to represent dynamic capability using a widely recognised, observable underpinning of dynamic capability – search routines. Using data on Irish manufacturers' efforts to adapt to a heightened environmental-regulation regime, we draw from environmental-management research and the evolutionary and behavioural theories of the firm to specify criteria for identifying, categorising and measuring search routines and using this to construct a dynamic capability measure. The contribution is to present a replicable, theory-based protocol for studying dynamic capability and its complex relationship with firm performance and evolutionary fitness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protection of children’s rights is a legitimate concern in school administration and practice. Since few school leaders are trained lawyers, this raises questions about how principals and teachers apply the law. The purpose of the study is to expand our understanding of how legal regulations are transformed into professional action on a local level. We focus on students’ right to a good psychosocial environment. We examine how school leaders and teachers work to develop a good psychosocial environment for all students. An analytical distinction between organisational and occupational professionality provides the theoretical framework for the discussion of results. The analysis indicates that when principals and teachers act in what they consider to be the child’s best interest, they rely more on their own ethical and pragmatic judgements than on legal regulations. This may have consequences for the extent to which students’ legal rights are protected.

Background: There is much enthusiasm from clinicians, industry and the government to utilise digital technologies and introduce alternatives to face-to-face consultations. Objective(s): To define good practice and inform digital technology implementation in relation to remote consultations via Skype™ (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA) and similar technologies. Design: Multilevel mixed-methods study of remote video consultations (micro level) embedded in an organisational case study (meso level), taking account of the national context and wider influences (macro level). Setting: Three contrasting clinical settings (Diabetes, Antenatal Diabetes and Cancer Surgery) in a NHS acute trust. Data collection and analysis: Macro level – interviews with 12 national-level stakeholders combined with document analysis. Meso level – longitudinal organisational ethnography comprising over 300 hours of observations, 24 staff interviews and analysis of 16 documents. Micro level – 30 video-recorded remote consultations; 17 matched audio-recorded face-to-face consultations. Interview and ethnographic data were analysed thematically and theorised using strong structuration theory. Consultations were transcribed verbatim and analysed using the Roter interaction analysis system (RIAS), producing descriptive statistics on different kinds of talk and interaction. Results: Policy-makers viewed remote video consultations as a way of delivering health care efficiently in the context of rising rates of chronic illness and growing demand for services. However, the reality of establishing such services in a busy and financially stretched NHS acute trust proved to be far more complex and expensive than anticipated. Embedding new models of care took much time and many resources, and required multiple workarounds. Considerable ongoing effort was needed to adapt and align structures, processes and people within clinics and across the organisation. For practical and safety reasons, virtual consultations were not appropriate for every patient or every consultation. By the end of this study, between 2% and 20% of all consultations were being undertaken remotely in participating clinics. Technical challenges in setting up such consultations were typically minor, but potentially prohibitive. When clinical, technical and practical preconditions were met, virtual consultations appeared to be safe and were popular with both patients and staff. Compared with face-to-face consultations, virtual consultations were very slightly shorter, patients did slightly more talking and both parties sometimes needed to make explicit things that typically remained implicit in a traditional encounter. Virtual consultations appeared to work better when the clinician and the patient knew and trusted each other. Some clinicians used Skype adaptively to support ad hoc clinician-initiated and spontaneous patient-initiated encounters. Other clinicians chose not to use the new service model at all. Conclusions: Virtual consultations appear to be safe, effective and convenient for patients who are preselected by their clinicians as ‘suitable’, but such patients represent a small fraction of clinic workloads. There are complex challenges to embedding virtual consultation services within routine practice in the NHS. Roll-out (across the organisation) and scale-up (to other organisations) are likely to require considerable support. Limitations: The focus on a single NHS organisation raises questions about the transferability of findings, especially quantitative data on likely uptake rates. Future research: Further studies on the micro-analysis of virtual consultations and on the spread and scale-up of virtual consulting services are planned. Funding: The National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research programme.

Patient safety is an increasing concern for health systems internationally. The majority of administrative work in UK general practice takes place in the context of organisational routines such as repeat prescribing and test results handling, where high workloads and increased clinician dependency on administrative staff have been identified as an emerging safety issue. Despite this trend, most research to date has focused on the redistribution of the clinical workload between doctors, nurses and allied health professionals within individual care settings. Drawing on Strauss's negotiated order perspective, we examine ethnographically the achievement of safety across the medical-administrative boundary in key high-volume routines in UK general practice. We focus on two main issues. First, GPs engaged in strategies of demarcation by defining receptionist work as routine, unspecialised and dependent upon GP clinical knowledge and oversight as the safety net to deal with complexity and risk. Receptionists consented to this ‘social closure’ when describing their role, thus reinforcing the underlying inter-occupational relationship of medical domination. Second, in everyday practice, GPs and receptionists engaged in informal boundary-blurring to safely accommodate the complexity of everyday high-volume routine work. This comprised additional informal discretionary spaces for receptionist decision-making and action that went beyond the routine safety work formally assigned to them. New restratified intra-occupational hierarchies were also being created between receptionists based on the complexity of the safety work that they were authorised to do at practice level, with specialised roles constituting a new form of administrative ‘professional project’. The article advances negotiated order theory by providing an in-depth examination of the ways in which medical-administrative boundary-making and boundary-blurring constitute distinct modes of safety in high-volume routines. It also provides the basis for further research and safety improvement to maximise team-level understandings of the pivotal role of medical-administrative negotiations in achieving safety and mitigating risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been suggested that charismatic species attract a disproportionate amount of attention and resources in international conservation. This paper follows up on this observation and investigates how cultural schemas and organisational routines shape resource allocation in conservation more broadly. Based on 44 in-depth interviews with programme managers in international conservation NGOs and in zoos with conservation programmes, we argue, that routines establishing units of intervention in conservation work shape the allocation of resources in ways that are not directly based on conservation science. In addition to the role of species, and charismatic species in particular, we examine the role of countries as units of interventions and of focus countries as privileged sites among them. Some countries present better opportunities than others; some are favored by institutional donors. We also discuss the role of landscapes and charismatic landscapes and of solutions and charismatic solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The handling of laboratory, imaging and other test results in UK general practice is a high-volume organisational routine that is both complex and high risk. Previous research in this area has focused on errors and harm, but a complementary approach is to better understand how safety is achieved in everyday practice. This paper ethnographically examines the role of informal dimensions of test results handling routines in the achievement of safety in UK general practice and how these findings can best be developed for wider application by policymakers and practitioners.Methods: Non-participant observation was conducted of high-volume organisational routines across eight UK general practices with diverse organisational characteristics. Sixty-two semi-structured interviews were also conducted with the key practice staff alongside the analysis of relevant documents.Results: While formal results handling routines were described similarly across the eight study practices, the everyday structure of how the routine should be enacted in practice was informally understood. Results handling safety took a range of local forms depending on how different aspects of safety were prioritised, with practices varying in terms of how they balanced thoroughness (i.e. ensuring the high-quality management of results by the most appropriate clinician) and efficiency (i.e. timely management of results) depending on a range of factors (e.g. practice history, team composition). Each approach adopted created its own potential risks, with demands for thoroughness reducing productivity and demands for efficiency reducing handling quality. Irrespective of the practice-level approach adopted, staff also regularly varied what they did for individual patients depending on the specific context (e.g. type of result, patient circumstances).Conclusions: General practices variably prioritised a legitimate range of results handling safety processes and outcomes, each with differing strengths and trade-offs. Future safety improvement interventions should focus on how to maximise practice-level knowledge and understanding of the range of context-specific approaches available and the safeties and risks inherent in each within the context of wider complex system conditions and interactions. This in turn has the potential to inform new kinds of proactive, contextually appropriate approaches to intervention development and implementation focusing on the enhanced deliberation of the safety of existing high-volume routines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discretion is described as a hallmark of professional work. Professional discretion rests on trust in the ability of certain occupational groups to make sound decisions ‘on behalf’ of societal authorities. It has been suggested that in Europe, managerialist-influenced policies with increased focus on control and accountability have placed pressure on professional discretion. Although earlier studies have demonstrated tensions between external and internal accountability, they have not highlighted how legal forms of authority are key aspects in the regulation of education, or how professionals handle legal standards in their practices. The purpose of this study is to understand the interplay between legal standards and professional discretion. An organisational-routines perspective is used to examine this interplay. Empirically, the students’ legal rights to a good psychosocial environment are used as a case. Based on interviews with principals, deputies and teachers in Norwegian schools, the paper examines how legal norms are translated into social practices, and how practitioners construct and legitimise their work. The study shows how preventive and remedial measures are prevalent in Norwegian schools. When laws and regulations require specific procedures, they are transformed into routines based on the schools’ iterative practices. The study adds an empirical analysis to current understandings of juridification in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the topic of diversity in the teaching workforce though the enactment of policy concentrating on teachers with dyslexia within the Further/Vocational Education and Training sectors of England and Finland. Two research projects from Finland and England focusing, respectively, on individual teachers’ perspectives and managers’ understandings of hidden diversity (such as dyslexia) are re-analysed through the use of the distinction between the ostensive and the performative aspects of organisational routines. The article contributes a new application of theory by drawing upon organisational routines as sources of flexibility and change rather than continuity alone. Avoiding the confusion between the ostensive and performative aspects of routines enables a more dynamic and emancipatory understanding of the identification and support for the promotion of workforce diversity to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Informed by the resource-based view, this study draws on customer relationship management (CRM) and value co-creation literature to develop a framework examining the impact of social networking sites on processes to manage customer relationships. Facilitating the depth and networked interactions necessary to truly engage customers, social networking sites act as a means of enhancing customer relationships through the co-creation of value, moving CRM into a social context. Tested and validated on a data set of hotels, the main contribution of the study to service research lies in the extension of CRM processes, termed relational information processes, to include value co-creation processes due to the social capabilities afforded by social networking sites. Information technology competency and social media orientation act as critical antecedents to these processes, which have a positive impact on both financial and non-financial aspects of firm performance. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed accordingly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into the phenomenon of social innovation has long focused on what it is and why people become engaged in this form of behaviour. However, another piece of the theoretical jigsaw requires understanding how this type of innovation is enacted by organisations. This article looks at the means by which not-for-profit ventures pursuing socially innovative activities develop the necessary capabilities to innovate. The multidimensional theoretical construct of absorptive capacity and the evolutionary economics concept of organisational routines are used to analyse 14 case studies of innovative not-for-profit ventures in Australia and the UK. The results show that these organisations have a unique mediating function in the social innovation process by configuring internal and external absorptive capacity routines to combine user and technological knowledge flows. The article concludes by proposing some research directions for those taking forward the study of social innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Rule violations are central to organisational learning, as they can be sources of useful information about the organisational condition. To help managers interpret and learn from these violations, this study examines the circumstances and motivations that lead employees to judge that rule breaking is appropriate. Content analysis revealed four dimensions on which rule breaks are justified: context (instrumental or expressive), content (reasonableness), consequences (trivial versus serious) and target (self- or other-directed). Understanding these dimensions will help managers respond to rule violations, contemplate their own bureaupathologies and search for more effective ways of organisational functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisational routines have paradoxically been recognised as one of the most important elements of both stability and flexibility in organisational behaviour. Identifying routines as sources of stability, macro-level theories tend to overlook micro-level subjective aspects, such as tacit knowledge, intrinsic motivation, and values. Drawing from the knowledge-creation theory (Nonaka, 1994), this paper synthesises the micro and macro, and the subjective and objective dimensions of organisational routines. Organisational routines are described as sources for stability and flexibility, enabling and constraining thought and action of organisational actors. Examples of routines are provided from two Japanese automakers, Honda and Toyota, to describe a dynamic interaction among individuals and their work environment. Conclusions and research limitations are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK general practices operate in an environment of high linguistic diversity, because of recent large-scale immigration and of the NHS's commitment to provide a professional interpreter to any patient if needed. Much activity in general practice is co-ordinated and patterned into organisational routines (defined as repeated patterns of interdependent actions, involving multiple actors, bound by rules and customs) that tend to be stable and to persist. If we want to understand how general practices are responding to pressures to develop new routines, such as interpreted consultations, we need to understand how existing organisational routines change. This will then help us to address a second question, which is how the interpreted consultation itself is being enacted and changing as it becomes routinised (or not) in everyday general practice. In seeking answers to these two questions, we undertook a qualitative study of narratives of interpreted primary care consultations in three London boroughs with large minority ethnic populations. In 69 individual interviews and two focus groups, we sought accounts of interpreted consultations from service users, professional interpreters, family member interpreters, general practitioners, practice nurses, receptionists, and practice managers. We asked participants to tell us both positive and negative stories of their experiences. We analysed these data by searching for instances of concepts relating to the organisational routine, the meaning of the interpreted consultation to the practice, and the sociology of medical work. Our findings identified a number of general properties of the interpreted consultation as an organisational routine, including the wide variation in the form of adoption, the stability of the routine, the adaptability of the routine, and the strength of the routine. Our second key finding was that this variation could be partly explained by characteristics of the practice as an organisation, especially whether it was traditional (small, family-run, ‘personal’ identity, typically multilingual, loose division of labour, relatively insular) or contemporary (large, bureaucratic, ‘efficient’ identity, typically monolingual, clear division of labour, richly networked). We conclude that there is a fruitful research agenda to be explored that links the organisational dimension of interpreting services with studies of clinical care and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]