The Power of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Corporate Change 13 (2004): 643-78; Marta S. Feldman, “Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change,” Organization Science 11 (2000): 611-29.

[166] before arriving at their central conclusion Winter, in a note in response to fact-checking questions, wrote: “There was very little empirical work of my own, and even less that got published- most of that being Nelson on aspects of technological change. In the domain of firm behavior, we mostly stood on the shoulders of the giants of the Carnegie School (Simon, Cyert, and March), and relied on a wide range of other sources-technology studies, business histories, development economics, some psychologists… and Michael Polanyi, however you classify him.”

[167] thousands of employees’ independent decisions Winter, in a note in response to fact-checking questions, clarified that such patterns that emerge from thousands of employees’ independent decisions are an aspect of routines, but routines also “get shaped from a lot of directions, one of which is deliberate managerial design. We emphasized, however, that when that happens, the actual routine that emerges, as opposed to the nominal one that was deliberately designed, is influenced, again, by a lot of choices at the individual level, as well as other considerations (see book [Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change] p. 108).”

[168] These organizational habits-or “routines” For more on the fascinating topic of how organizational routines emerge and work, see Paul S. Adler, Barbara Goldoftas, and David I. Levine, “Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System,” Organization Science 10 (1999): 43-67; B. E. Ashforth and Y. Fried, “The Mindlessness of Organisational Behaviors,” Human Relations 41 (1988): 305-29; Donde P. Ashmos, Dennis Duchon, and Reuben R. McDaniel, “Participation in Strategic Decision Making: The Role of Organisational Predisposition and Issue Interpretation,” Decision Sciences 29 (1998): 25-51; M. C. Becker, “The Influence of Positive and Negative Normative Feedback on the Development and Persistence of Group Routines,” doctoral thesis, Purdue University, 2001; M. C. Becker and N. Lazaric, “The Role of Routines in Organizations: An Empirical and Taxonomic Investigation,” doctoral thesis, Judge Institute of Management, University of Cambridge, 2004; Bessant, Caffyn, and Gallagher, “The Influence of Knowledge in the Replication of Routines,” Economie Appliquee LVI, 65-94; “An Evolutionary Model of Continuous Improvement Behaviour,” Technovation 21 (2001): 67-77; Tilmann Betsch, Klaus Fiedler, and Julia Brinkmann, “Behavioral Routines in Decision Making: The Effects of Novelty in Task Presentation and Time Pressure on Routine Maintenance and Deviation,” European Journal of Psychology 28 (1998): 861-78; Tilmann Betsch et al., “When Prior Knowledge Overrules New Evidence: Adaptive Use of Decision Strategies and Role Behavioral Routines,” Swiss Journal of Psychology 58 (1999): 151-60; Tilmann Betsch et al., “The Effects of Routine Strength on Adaptation and Information Search in Recurrent Decision Making,” Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes 84 (2001): 23-53; J. Burns, “The Dynamics of Accounting Change: Interplay Between New Practices, Routines, Institutions, Power, and Politics,” Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 13 (2000): 566-86; M. D. Cohen, “Individual Learning and Organisational Routine: Emerging Connections,” Organisation Science 2 (1991): 135-39; M. Cohen and P. Bacdayan, “Organisational Routines Are Stored as Procedural Memory: Evidence from a Laboratory Study,” Organisation Science 5 (1994): 554-68; M. D. Cohen et al., “Routines and Other Recurring Action Patterns of Organisations: Contemporary Research Issues,” Industrial and Corporate Change 5 (1996): 653-98; B. Coriat, “Variety, Routines, and Networks: The Metamorphosis of Fordist Firms,” Industrial and Corporate Change 4 (1995): 205-27; B. Coriat and G. Dosi, “Learning How to Govern and Learning How to Solve Problems: On the Co-evolution of Competences, Conflicts, and Organisational Routines,” in The Role of Technology, Strategy, Organisation, and Regions, ed. A. D. J. Chandler, P. Hadstroem, and O. Soelvell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); L. D’adderio, “Configuring Software, Reconfiguring Memories: The Influence of Integrated Systems on the Reproduction of Knowledge and Routines,” Industrial and Corporate Change 12 (2003): 321-50; P. A. David, Path Dependence and the Quest for Historical Economics: One More Chorus of the Ballad of QWERTY (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); G. Delmestri, “Do All Roads Lead to Rome… or Berlin? The Evolution of Intra-and Inter-organisational Routines in the Machine-Building Industry,” Organisation Studies 19 (1998): 639-65; Giovanni Dosi, Richard R. Nelson, and Sidney Winter, “Introduction: The Nature and Dynamics of Organisational Capabilities,” The Nature and Dynamics of Organisational Capabilities, ed. G. Dosi, R. R. Nelson, and S. G. Winter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1-22; G. Dowell and A. Swaminathan, “Racing and Back-pedalling into the Future: New Product Introduction and Organisational Mortality in the US Bicycle Industry, 1880-1918,” Organisation Studies 21 (2000): 405-31; A. C. Edmondson, R. M. Bohmer, and G. P. Pisano, “Disrupted Routines: Team Learning and New Technology Implementation in Hospitals,” Administrative Science Quarterly 46 (2001): 685-716; M. Egidi, “Routines, Hierarchies of Problems, Procedural Behaviour: Some Evidence from Experiments,” in The Rational Foundations of Economic Behaviour, ed. K. Arrow et al. (London: Macmillan, 1996), 303-33; M. S. Feldman, “Organisational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change,” Organisation Science 11 (2000): 611-29; Marta S. Feldman, “A Performative Perspective on Stability and Change in Organizational Routines,” Industrial and Corporate Change 12 (2003): 727-52; Marta S. Feldman and B. T. Pentland, “Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change,” Administrative Science Quarterly 48 (2003): 94-118; Marta S. Feldman and A. Rafaeli, “Organisational Routines as Sources of Connections and Understandings,” Journal of Management Studies 39 (2002): 309-31; A. Garapin and A. Hollard, “Routines and Incentives in Group Tasks,” Journal of Evolutionary Economics 9 (1999): 465-86; C. J. Gersick and J. R. Hackman, “Habitual Routines in Task-Performing Groups,” Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes 47 (1990): 65-97; R. Grant, “Toward a Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm,” Strategic Management Journal 17 (1996): 109-22; R. Heiner, “The Origin of Predictable Behaviour,” American Economic Review 73 (1983): 560-95; G. M. Hodgson, “The Ubiquity of Habits and Rules,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 21 (1997): 663-84; G. M. Hodgson, “The Mystery of the Routine: The Darwinian Destiny of An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change,” Revue Economique 54 (2003): 355-84; G. M. Hodgson and T. Knudsen, “The Firm as an Interactor: Firms as Vehicles for Habits and Routines,” Journal of Evolutionary Economics 14, no. 3 (2004): 281-307; A. Inam, “Institutions, Routines, and Crises: Post-earthquake Housing Recovery in Mexico City and Los Angeles,” doctoral thesis, University of Southern California, 1997; A. Inam, “Institutions, Routines, and Crises-Post-earthquake Housing Recovery in Mexico City and Los Angeles,” Cities 16 (1999): 391-407; O. Jones and M. Craven, “Beyond the Routine: Innovation Management and the Teaching Company Scheme,” Technovation 21 (2001): 267-79; M. Kilduff, “Performance and Interaction Routines in Multinational Corporations,” Journal of International Business Studies 23 (1992): 133-45; N. Lazaric, “The Role of Routines, Rules, and Habits in Collective Learning: Some Epistemological and Ontological Considerations,” European Journal of Economic and Social Systems 14 (2000): 157-71; N. Lazaric and B. Denis, “How and Why Routines Change: Some Lessons from the Articulation of Knowledge with ISO 9002 Implementation in the Food Industry,” Economies et Societes 6 (2001): 585-612; B. Levitt and J. March, “Organisational Learning,” Annual Review of Sociology 14 (1988): 319-40; P.