Organisational Routines and Organisational Learning in Their Cognitive and Political Dimensions

This paper draws on J.R. Commons theory of institutional change to make some suggestions for integrating the political dimension into an analysis of routines and organisational learning, or the processes that change routines. The programmatic advice offered here remains incomplete, though, as the cognitive aspect of routines is examined from the partial angle of the relational and organisation-specific knowledge that individuals require in order to get the job done. In the concluding section of the paper, the author suggest that research based on the cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition may provide the tools for integrating this latter building-block into a Commons inspired account of routines and organisational learning.