Interorganisationale Routinen – Entstehung, Implikationen sowie Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer zielorientierten Gestaltung

The article reviews how inter-organizational routines emerge, how they are refined by agents, and how this influences the trajectories of inter-organizational patterns of action, which are also relevant for emergent activities in dynamic environments. Motivated by empirical results in the “New Media Services” area, an understanding of routines and their precise modeling potential is reflected and conceptually grounded in the context of the (co-)evolutionary competence-based theory of the firm. First implications for a necessary, but also possible routine management are deduced. The self-strengthening effects that occur during the emergence of routines must be recognized and the (limited) possibilities of purposeful control applied, to prevent the danger of unreflecting persistency and narrowed decision capabilities.