Theorizing Routine Enactment from a Pragmatist Perspective: Agency, Experience, and Situational Novelty

Research on routine dynamics has shown that, due to the improvisational nature of agency and the ever-present situational novelty, every routine enactment is, to some extent, novel. However, extant theorizing, by focusing predominantly on observable patterns of action, underplays the role of routine participants’ lived experience in shaping routine enactment. Seeking to address this limitation, we draw upon pragmatist thinking to develop an integrative process model of routine enactment, focusing in particular on the agency–situational novelty interplay. Specifically, we identify the process of inquiry as the general mechanism through which routine participants respond to situational novelty, and distinguish three types of routine enactment: habitual enactment, spontaneous variation, and reconstruction. Our model contributes to routine dynamics research by (a) integrating extant research at a higher level of generality, while being sensitive to the local circumstances of routine enactment; (b) accounting for the interplay between deliberate and pre-reflective, embodied responses to novelty; (c) strengthening the richness and practical relevance of routine enactment explanations by attending closely to what matters most to routine participants when they tackle situational novelty; and (d) opening multiple promising avenues for future study by establishing links with diverse areas of research relating to routine enactment.