This paper examines Chapter 6, “The Role of Artifacts in Establishing Connectivity Within Professional Routines” in Howard-Grenville et al., (2016). Chapter 6 focuses on professional routines and suggests that actors and artifacts are not independent entities, but that routines are composed in an inseparable relationship. This framework suggests that actors and artifacts, in their entanglement, are the basis for the connectivity of “profession,” “individual work,” and “collective work” in professional routines. This paper presents an overview of Chapter 6, reaffirms the definition of professional, and discusses possible developments from Jarzabkowski, Bednarek, and Spee.

This paper is a commentary on Chapter 7 of the Handbook of Routines. The purpose of Chapter 7 is to clarify the effects of power among organizational actors in the execution of routines. Three performance review interviews are used as case studies, recorded and analyzed in conversation. The analysis revealed that the power relationship between the supervisor and the subordinate in the execution of the routines changes whether or not deviations from the ostensive aspect occur. However, since this chapter is also biased toward a discussion of performative aspect in routine dynamics, it is considered necessary to reexamine the presence or absence of a patterning component in order to make this a truly routine dynamics study.