Comparing Organizational Routines as Recurrent Patterns of Action

This paper demonstrates that patterns of action are a fruitful basis for an empirical science of organizational routines by analyzing data from the invoice processing routines in four Norwegian organizations. Invoice processing is a highly institutionalized activity, governed by accounting rules and subject to audit. These four organizations use the same technology for the same task, yet the patterns of action generated by the routines are significantly different. We analyze the patterns in terms of individual events, pairs of events, and whole sequences of events, and at two different levels of abstraction. We discuss the implications of this approach for theories of routines as genes, and for an empirical science of organizational routines.