So conceived, routines are a much more composite
concept than the pricing rules to which
Cyert and March refer. Indeed, Taylorism and
Ohnism are more akin to the organization form
distinctions that I made when examining the
organization of work (Williamson, 1980). This
latter entailed the comparison of six work
modes—putting-out, federated, communal-emh,
peer group, inside contracting, and authority
relation—across product flow attributes, job
assignment attributes, and incentive attributes.
The Coriat and Dosi groupings (knowledge distribution;
mechanisms of coordination; governance)
are related but different. Might these be worked
up in such a way as to operationalize the study
of work organization more fully and effectively?
Still another possibility is to operationalize the
concept of routine by appealing to the cognitive
science notion of ‘script’ (Nooteboom, 1999b).