Investigating Routines and Dynamic Capabilities for Change and Innovation

Abstract

In attempting to research the challenging question of how routines and dynamic capabilities are related to change and innovation, I utilize a variety of approaches that eventually complement each other in coming to answer in the following ways: 1) How can current knowledge regarding routines and dynamic capabilities be utilized to explain how organizations can solve various problems of various complexities? 2) To what extent are insights from the routine dynamics and dynamic capabilities research streams utilized by scholars from both fields and what are the implications of the current state of conversation? 3) How do routines and dynamic capabilities relate to exploratory innovation? 4) Can routines display dynamic patterns when they are enacted in constrained settings, yet actors are pressured by high levels of environmental variation? Each of the questions are asked with a different purpose and hence, require a substantially different approach. Hence, I have utilized four different methodologies throughout this dissertation