The Performativity of Routines : Theorising the Influence of Artefacts and Distributed Agencies on Routines Dynamics

Drawing from advances in Organisation Studies and recent debates within Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Financial Markets, this paper proposes a theoretical framework that characterises the mutual adaptation between formal routines, rules and actual performances as iterative cycles of framing, overflowing and reframing of knowledge inputs and actions. This framework, combined with the ethnographic observation of the 'engineering freeze' process at a leading automotive manufacturer, allows us to advance routines' theory by 1- capturing the dynamics of convergence and divergence between procedures and performances; and 2- improving our understanding of the influence of artefacts and distributed agencies on routines' evolution