Drawing from advances in Organisation Studies and recent debates within Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Financial Markets, this paper proposes a theoretical framework that characterises the mutual adaptation between formal routines, rules and actual performances as iterative cycles of framing, overflowing and reframing of knowledge inputs and actions. This framework, combined with the ethnographic observation of the ‘engineering freeze ’ process at a leading automotive manufacturer, allows us to advance routines ’ theory by 1- capturing the dynamics of convergence and divergence between procedures and performances; and 2- improving our understanding of the influence of artefacts and distributed agencies on routines’ dynamics.

When we sat down to start working on this Progress Report, the most recent crisis of global capitalism had finally spread to Germany. The head of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, had just made headlines world-wide with his admission that he no longer believed in the market’s self-healing power, demanding a concerted action of governments, central banks and private