Abstract

Emerging organizational research has proposed increasingly nuanced links between capabilities and routines, which in turn play vital roles in organizational survival and prosperity. We draw on prior work to define capabilities as involving some consistency in potential outcomes in a particular domain. This contrasts with routines, which involve consistency in processes. We report results of an inductive study of patterns linking capabilities and routines in 60 young firms, drawing on 1,725 transcript pages. Many capabilities arose through deliberate design or combinations of existing routines. In rare cases organizations repeatedly improvised in a particular area and thereby sustained capabilities that did not rely on consistent routines in the relevant action domain. We also found several ways in which organizational capabilities sometimes harmed overall organizational performance, although in some cases the organizations learned from harmful capabilities. Routines arose from multiple sources. We highlight three forms of “making do ” with routines available from varied sources, all forms of bricolage. Finally, routines played several roles in organizational transformation in addition to their contribution to inertia. The paper suggests that we can theoretically distinguish capabilities from routines even as they are intertwined over time in organizations, and that improvisation and bricolage play roles in organizational entrepreneurial learning.

Citations