In this paper, we challenge the traditional understanding of organizational routines as creating inertia in organizations. We adapt Latour's distinction between ostensive and performative to build a theory that explains why routines are a source of change as well as stability. The ostensive aspect of a routine embodies what we typically think of as the structure. The performative aspect embodies the specific actions, by specific people, at specific times and places, that bring the routine to life. We argue that the ostensive aspect enables people to guide, account for, and refer to specific performances of a routine, and the performative aspect creates, maintains, and modifies the ostensive aspect of the routine. We argue that the relationship between ostensive and performative aspects of routines creates an on-going opportunity for variation, selection, and retention of new practices and patterns of action within routines and allows routines to generate a wide range of outcomes, from apparent stability t...

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Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity re- sults from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model - based on self-interest - fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral vari- ability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life.

/pdf/economic-man-in-cross-cultural-perspective-behavioral-34um1j2a3c.pdf

“Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

Management innovation

This review article develops an integrated overview of the present status of the theory of power and conflict in marketing channels. It includes a presentation of the conceptual foundation provided...

The Theory of Power and Conflict in Channels of Distribution

Picking winners or building them? Alliance, intellectual, and human capital as selection criteria in venture financing and performance of biotechnology startups

not prevented, the acquisition of systematic, socially applicable knowledge. The view of conflict as completely and always &dquo;bad&dquo; and the attribution of war to &dquo;herd instincts&dquo; are cases in point. Given the pervasiveness of conflict phenomena and the diversity of approaches to inquiry, it is legitimate to ask whether the apparent intellectual disorder reflects an inherently incoherent focus of social analysis-a focus artificially created by

The analysis of social conflict—toward an overview and synthesis

Social change in developing areas : a reinterpretation of evolutionary theory

/pdf/social-change-in-developing-areas-a-reinterpretation-of-34x2aazsmx.pdf

Social Change in Developing Areas, A Reinterpretation of Evolutionary Theory

T HE literature on jazz, which has grown enormously in recent years, consists in the main of biographies of jazz musicians, record reviews, and analysis of the music itself. Relatively little attention has been devoted to the study of social groups in jazz and, with some exceptions, what literature exists is primarily descriptive and widely scattered. It is our intention in this paper to present a factual description of what we shall call the jazz community. The available literature, as well as our own empirical observation, suggests that this is organized along well-developed lines which reveal specific behavioral patterns. We are dealing, then, with a number of people who share an occupational ideology and participate in a set of expected behaviors. We use the term community here not to denote a group with a geographic locus, but in the sense of a community of interest; what is implied by the word is that the people described here share a set of norms which in turn define roles for them.

Raymond W. Mack

Papers

The analysis of social conflict—toward an overview and synthesis

Social change in developing areas : a reinterpretation of evolutionary theory

Social Change in Developing Areas, A Reinterpretation of Evolutionary Theory

The Jazz Community

The protestant ethic, level of aspiration, and social mobility: an empirical test *