Agency, Action, and Time: A Relational Approach to Routine Dynamics in a World in Flux

This paper revisits the foundational concepts of agency and action in routine dynamics to provide guidance for intentional and directional change in a world in flux from a routine dynamics perspective. First, the authors put forward a relational-temporal triad of agency as a ratio of the past, present, and future to outline what gives shape to individual action. Second, the authors combine with this a relational-temporal triad of routine as a ratio of patterning, performing, and projecting to outline what gives shape to social action. Based on this, the authors reconceptualize the dynamic of routines as an enfolding inside-out and outside-in process that expresses the relational constraints between the intentionality of individual action and the directionality of social action. In managing a world in flux toward desirable futures, routines – as temporal structures for carrying out organizational work – need to be able to carry some degree of continuity to bring about change in fulfilling a desired and identified direction. The authors identify in-tension-less, in-tension-al, and in-tension-ful as three different degrees of intentionality in individual action and continuing, renewing, and transforming as the spectrum of a continuum of directionality in social action for routine change. Using time to bring in a fully relational understanding of agency and action in routine dynamics, the authors render the complexities of structure-agency and continuity-change dualities clearer and reveal their otherwise latent properties. This more complete picture of routine dynamics would allow for more intentional organizational routine change forward when facing significant environmental and social challenges in a world of flux.