Research philosophy

In this section, two key arguments are presented that are the foundations for the methodology approach of this study:

(1) Ontological assumptions: Practice lens and structuration theory (2) Epistemological assumptions: Abduction of an empirical study

48 3.1.1 Ontological assumptions

There are two parts relating to the ontological assumptions: practice lens and structuration theory.

Practice lens. The practice lens views social life as an ongoing production that emerges

through the recurrent actions of people (Feldman and Orlikowski 2011). Practices are “embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity” that are organised around common practical understandings (Schatzki 2001, p.11). According to Feldman and Pentland (2003), the study of organisational routines has deep roots in social theory. A routine consists of the ostensive aspect, the abstract idea of it, and the performative aspect, the actual performance of it (Feldman and Pentland 2003; Pentland and Feldman 2005). Both aspects are not static structures, but are constantly changing depending on individual and context (e.g. Howard-Grenville 2005; Bruns 2009). Thus practice theory focuses on dynamics, relations and enactment, and provides a powerful analytical tool to understand the emergence and flexibility of routines that are equally complex and dynamic (Feldman and Orlikowski 2011). Specifically, this study adopts the

theoretical approach of the practice lens, which strives to find a specific explanation for an activity that answers the “how” (Orlikowski 2010; Feldman and Orlikowski 2011). Thus in studying routines, a practice lens evaluates how routines are generated and operated in different contexts and over time.

Practice theorists argue that everyday actions and practices are consequential, and that practices are strongly associated with the foregrounding of human agency (Schatzki 2002; Feldman and Orlikowski 2011). The theoretical framework of the routine dynamics from Feldman and Pentland (2003) is built on the foundation that agency plays an important role through the subjectivity that actors bring into routines. For example, actors have the power to influence how a routine is performed (Howard-Grenville 2005), or the ability to adapt routines based on experience (Turner and Fern 2012). Thus, they have the ability to “make a difference” in routine enactment (Giddens 1984, p.14). This supports the notion that routines are not inflexible, but are susceptible to change because of the actors involved. Agency in routines is part of a duality derived from structuration theory.

The practice lens has been the primary influence in this study’s overall methodology. Its focus on agency means that it aims at understanding how participants interact with one another, and how they respond to and change the nature of the environment they are in (Wadham and

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Warren 2014). Therefore during observations it was important to note down the context of the conversations in my field notes so this could be taken into account when the transcript was analysed. Additionally, the practice lens guiding the overall purpose of this study forces me to focus on the core logic of how the routines are produced and changed, along with the consequences whether intentional or not (Feldman and Orlikowski 2011). In other words, the practice lens allows me to understand more about the flexibility of routines. With this in mind, the routines chosen to be examined should be complex enough to exhibit significant changes that are identifiable as the result of multiple participants responding to the environment. For example, operational routines that have quick cycles such as invoice-processing would not be suitable for this study as not enough observation can be made as to how the routine is changed. The word ‘how’ itself denotes that the observed routine change should occur over time, thus more complex routines are more suited to this study.

Structuration theory. The ostensive-performative relationship is in line with the duality of

structure and agency where the abstract idea of the routine (ostensive) is the structure, and the action performances (performative) represent agency (Giddens 1984; Feldman and Pentland 2003). These two aspects are not individual parts, but exist together as “generative systems with internal structures and dynamics” (Pentland and Feldman 2005, p.793). Thus neither aspect on its own is sufficient to describe the properties of routines (Feldman and Pentland 2003). In understanding routine flexibility, this study focuses on how actors enact routines in various settings that result in changes in the performances, while not putting a specific focus on either aspect. By doing this, I will be able to gain insight into the relationship between the ostensive and performative aspects through the detailed empirical observations of the flexibility in routine enactment (Deken et al. 2016). In summary, this study uses the theoretical approach of the practice lens to examine the duality of the ostensive and performative aspects on routine flexibility.

50 3.1.2 Epistemological assumptions

This section discusses the main epistemological approach, which is through abduction, and the overall methodological design using the Gioia method (Langley and Abdallah 2011).

Drawing on a practice-based approach to routines, I used an abductive approach (Dubois and Gadde 2002; Van Maanen et al. 2007) to construct theory relating to routine flexibility. This means that themes and concepts were systematically extracted from the data gathered (Berg 2009) and refined based on theoretical concepts as the data analysis progressed. Abduction is viewed as a mode of theorising based on explanations for unusual phenomena (Paavola 2004), doubt (Locke

et al. 2008), and speculation (Weick 2005). According to Paavola (2004), a theory can be further strengthened if attention is paid to the relationship between phenomena and background information rather than just explaining a specific phenomenon. An example of this is the relationship between organisational routines and how they can be flexible in different contexts. Van Maanen et al. (2007) view the abductive approach as a path of critical reasoning rather than pure logic. For instance, discrepancies can be evaluated in terms of location (where it happened), timing (when it happened), frequency (how often it happens), and magnitude (the importance of the discrepancy) (Van Maanen et al. 2007).

This study on routines contributes to what Edmondson and McManus (2007) refer to as 'intermediate theory', which is research that draws on prior work to propose new constructs and relationships. According to them, past studies in this category (i.e. intermediate theory) are usually carried out by alternating between inductive and deductive approaches. This makes abduction a suitable approach for this type of study because it makes use of the benefits of both approaches. Langley et al. (2013) proposed that abduction addresses the challenges in unravelling processes as they happen by connecting empirical observations to extant theoretical ideas. So using the abductive approach to study routines seems an appropriate choice compared to other reasoning forms (e.g. induction and deduction) because it focuses on the generation of novel insights by assessing plausibility instead of assuming something is unreasonable (Locke et al. 2008). In other words, abduction offers a vast potential for creating new insights into routine flexibility. Furthermore, Edmondson and McManus (2007) demonstrated that past studies in intermediate theory mostly created new constructs to add to an existing model of the theory. This study establishes three new constructs that relate to the ostensive-performative routine dynamics model.

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While abduction is the epistemological approach, the overall research design resembles the Gioia method (Langley and Abdallah 2011) based on the research methods used by Dennis Gioia and his colleagues. There are two aspects of this method: firstly the analysis strategy, and secondly, how the data is presented. For the analysis, the Gioia method aims at making sense of the experience researchers gain from observing organisations. The initial stage involves writing descriptive narratives around salient themes which at the same time provide closeness to first-order participant perspectives (Langley and Abdallah 2011). From these narratives, themes are extracted based on the second-order interpretations which are then grouped into interrelated overarching categories that show a connection to the overarching research gap. For the presentation, the key output of the analysis is a data structure, usually in the form of a horizontal tree-shape (for examples see Corley and Gioia 2004; Mantere et al. 2012; Turner and Rindova 2012). This final output is achieved through iterations back and forth between theory-driven themes and data, where the emerging ideas lead to additional data collection and analysis to fill in the gaps in the data structure as research progresses (Langley and Abdallah 2011). Therefore, the Gioia method resonates with the abductive approach and has been used in past studies (e.g. Martins 2013; Monin

et al. 2013; Schweisfurth and Herstatt 2016) who all used abduction as their analytical approach.