Abstract
This paper’s purpose is to develop a theory of routines. In this paper, I propose a revised concept of routines, especially those that have ostensive and performative aspects. The framework is a leading and key conceptual tool for understanding organizations but is problematic and obscure. The problem and obscurity comprise three points. First, the performative aspect of a routine is observable and so are the many related artifacts (manuals, standards, documents, etc.). However, the ostensive aspect of a routine and the artifacts are not observable. Second, should we tolerate unobservable real existence? Is this one of those trivial scientific-philosophical problems? The ostensive aspect of a routine, in my opinion, is redundant. In this paper, I presume that the ostensive aspect is not real and is only a conceptual tool. Third, various concepts of routines have been used in organizational literature. In this paper, I summarize and reinterpret the main uses of the concept. To develop the revised concept of routines, I conducted qualitative research on the sales routines of insurance agents in Osaka, Japan. I chose the qualitative approach because of how I wanted to investigate the agents’ operations. I was interested in examining in detail the mechanism of their routines, specifically the constituents of the routines and how they interplay with each other. In order to avoid the complexity that characterizes previous models of routines, I needed to adopt the quantitative instead of qualitative approach. However, I am unable to perform a quantitative study on my own. The sales routines of insurance agents seem to be theoretically important, because their routines have two important aspects. First, their sales operations appear to be relatively free from manual-like norms. Sales operations vary as attributes of sales change (e.g., who the customer is, the customer’s characteristics, and where and when negotiations are done). It is plausible that the sales routines of insurance agents are flexible. Second, their operations are also bound at various levels of social institutions (e.g., by insurance laws, industrial regulation, and documents). These rules are often compulsive.
