ABSTRACT
Daniel Geiger and Anja Danner-Schröder The idea of a communicative constitution of organization (CCO) is witnessing
increasing attention in organizational studies (Blaschke, Schoeneborn, & Seidl, 2012; Cooren, Kuhn, Cornelissen, & Clark, 2011; Fenton & Langley, 2011; Koschmann, Kuhn, & Pfarrer, 2012; Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2011; Schoeneborn & Scherer, 2012; Schoeneborn & Wehmeier, 2013; Spee & Jarzabkowski, 2011; Stohl & Stohl, 2011; Taylor, 2011). It has the potential to fundamentally redirect our ontological and epistemological assumptions about organizations, thus raising new research questions. While the idea of a communicative constitution of organization is shared by many scholars following the earlier linguistic turn in organization studies (e. g., Alvesson, 1989; Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000; Boje, Oswick, & Ford, 2004; Czarniawska, 1998), the implications of the CCO perspective with respect to organizational phenomena such as, for example, change, culture, or identity are only beginning to show. In the following, we employ the CCO perspective to provide new insights into another central concept in organization studies: organizational routines. Organizational studies heavily discuss organizational routines, particularly their
contribution to organizational stability or change. Undeniably, organizational routines are a fundamental mechanism for coordinating work (Cohen et al., 1996; Cyert & March, 1963; Feldman & Pentland, 2003; Jarzabkowski, Lê, & Feldman, 2012; March & Simon, 1958; Ortmann, 2010). Despite this important role of routines in organizations, their conceptual nature is not yet well theorized (Becker, 2008; Dionysiou & Tsoukas, 2013). Common conceptualizations range from routines as stable, repetitive standard operating procedures (Cyert & March, 1963; March & Simon, 1958) to routines as sources of organizational flexibility and change (Feldman, 2000; Feldman & Pentland, 2003; Howard-Grenville, 2005; Pentland, Feldman, Becker, & Liu, 2012; Pentland, Haerem, & Hillison, 2010; Pentland & Rueter, 1994; Rerup & Feldman, 2011). Whereas the first perspective primarily focuses on the structural aspects of routines, the latter sees routines through the lens of the performing actors and their ability to enact routines in multiple ways.
