Applying organizational routines in understanding organizational change

Organizational routines are considered basic components of organizational behavior and repositories of organizational capabilities (Nelson & Winter, 1982). They do, therefore, hold one of the keys to understanding organizational change. The article focuses on how the concept of organizational routines can be applied in empirical research to understand organizational change. We identify problems encountered in such research and present proposals for how to deal with them, in order to advance our knowledge of routines and our understanding of organizational change. Developing these themes, we also introduce the articles in the special section 'Towards an Operationalization of the Routines Concept'. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.