When Practices Control Practitioners: Integrating self-reinforcing dynamics into practice-based accounts of managing and organizing

Research on self-reinforcement in management and organization studies

The concept of self-reinforcement has also found its way into organization theory (Masuch, 1985; Sydow & Schreyögg, 2013; Tsoukas & Pina e Cunha, 2017) and informs explanations of several notable phenomena that have not yet been analysed from a practice-based perspective. One classic example of a self-reinforcing dynamic in organizations is the bureaucratic circle (Gouldner, 1954), in which management, being skeptical of the workers’ motivation, tries to increase performance by increasing the emphasis on formal rules and close supervision. The workers, though, respond apathetically, showing diminished interest in their work because they feel patronized and distrusted. This reaction, in turn, prompts managers to formulate additional and more elaborate rules and to intensify supervision still further, escalating distress and resistance among the workers. Despite growing interest in postbureaucratic or self-managed forms of organizing (Lee & Edmondson, 2017), this dynamic is still relevant in today’s organizations and is clearly self-reinforcing in nature. It consists of mutually reinforcing behaviors or practices, which result in a collective dynamic clearly inimical to the interests of the actors involved and is nevertheless hard to change.

Inner and outer expression, and necessary conditions for the emergence of self-reinforcing processes

From the rich literature on self-reinforcement within and around organizations (e.g., Garud & Kumaraswamy, 2005; Magee & Galinsky, 2008; Perlow, Okhuysen, & Repenning, 2002; Rhee & Kim, 2015; Sleesman, Lennard, McNamara, & Conlon, 2018), we can distill a description of self-reinforcement as an “objective” behavioral dynamic that has a distinct outer and inner expression. Its outer expression—the characteristic distribution of outcomes generated by self-reinforcing processes over time—is that of a nonlinear, escalating development in which small deviations that are easily overlooked generate enough momentum to build up an avalanche-like dynamic. Gouldner’s (1954) bureaucratic circle can be illustrated with the “extreme elaboration of bureaucratic rules” (p. 179) as the main outcome of the self-reinforcing process that emerged between the managers and workers at a gypsum mine.

The behavioral dynamic’s inner expression—the characteristic “look and feel” of self-reinforcing processes for the individuals who enact them—is an increasing preoccupation with a specific behavioral principle that renders agents unable to act otherwise and often coincides with a decoupling of individual experiences from system-level dynamics. The managers in Gouldner’s (1954) study, for example, became more and more preoccupied with feelings of distrust against their workers, who, they assumed, would “sneak away and go to sleep if you let them” (p. 139). The managers felt the need to concentrate much of their effort on formulating a set of tightly knit rules and diligently monitoring their compliance. Because the workers perceived this close supervision as undeserved punishment, their resistance (the immediate feedback experienced by managers) reinforced assumptions about workers being demotivated. As a result, both managers and workers found it difficult to see the bigger picture—which would have revealed their own role in exacerbating the very problems they were trying to solve.

The literature on self-reinforcement also helps us infer three conditions necessary for recursively reproductive social processes to become self-reinforcing, that is, to develop the characteristic outer form and inner expression described above. The first necessary condition is positive feedback, the classic foundation of all concepts of self-reinforcement. In the context of this literature, positive feedback is not to be misunderstood as a normative classification of some behavior. It refers instead to causal relationships between the elements of a process “that amplify an insignificant or accidental initial kick, build up deviation and diverge from the initial condition” (Maruyama, 1963, p. 164). A key aspect that kept Gouldner’s (1954) bureaucratic circle alive was the fact that a specific pattern of managerial behavior (stress on strict rules and close supervision) triggered a reaction in the workers (apathy and poor performance), which exacerbated that managerial behavior and so forth.

A second condition necessary for the emergence of self-reinforcing processes is a minimum frequency of reproduction. To be able to generate momentum endogenously, a process needs to be reproduced with a certain frequency. Gouldner’s (1954) bureaucratic circle gained the necessary momentum and organizational relevance only because working by the rules emerged mostly as an organization-wide practice of the workers. Accentuating the elaboration of rules and close supervision became the typical, oft-repeated mantra of management. Of course, due to the other two necessary conditions of self-reinforcing processes, breaking such a cycle in practice is easier to assume than to realize.

The third condition necessary for a recursive process to become self-reinforcing is an ability of the process to accumulate reproductive resources. At least some of the sociocultural, material, or cognitive resources that the process generates through its enactment need to be accumulated in such a way that they can facilitate future enactments (e.g., Repenning & Sterman, 2002). This self-generated resource base provides the process with the necessary momentum, even if the environment has already begun to change. In the case of Gouldner’s (1954) bureaucratic circle, the workers’ attitudes toward work—a significant reproductive resource—would not instantly change even if the managers were to refrain from tightening rules any further, nor would the managers’ attitudes instantly change even if the workers’ perceived slackening were to change.

The relevance of these insights notwithstanding, previous research on self-reinforcement has been criticized for being rather mechanistic in its conceptualization (e.g., Boje, Baca-Greif, Intindola, & Elias, 2017) and too reliant on ex-post rationalizations in its empirical applications (e.g., Garud, Kumaraswamy, & Karnøe, 2010). The findings of these studies are thus rarely surprising anymore. It seems that they cannot do much more than reconfirm the grand narrative of self-reinforcement. Much empirical research on self-reinforcing processes starts with some current crisis, such as “puzzling persistencies” (Sydow, Schreyögg, & Koch, 2009, p. 695), and then reviews the past for specific, self-reinforcing mechanisms (some version of the necessary conditions we have discussed above) in order to explain how history came to matter. But because people live their lives forward rather than backward and because past causes are inaccessible, an important, yet missing, perspective on self-reinforcement would be one that helps improve the understanding of this phenomenon in vivo and in situ. This, of course, is seen as a key feature of most research that takes a practice-based perspective, for “a practice theory orientation would argue that it is worthwhile to study how people act and how institutions are at work when the outcomes are still unknown” (Zilber, 2021, p. 232).

By giving primacy to the present, practice theory affords an effective guardrail for theorizing self-reinforcement, which typically suffers from a preoccupation with the past. Practice theory should thus make it possible to overcome the inherent limitations of the current, rather substantialist and structuralist conceptions of self-reinforcement. This endeavor, however, is neither easy nor straightforward. It calls for unpacking a central paradox of all practice theories, which was perhaps best expressed by George Herbert Mead (1932): “Reality exists in a present. The present of course implies a past and a future, and to these both we deny existence” (p. 1). As a first step toward tackling this formidable challenge, we now critically and selectively discuss the extent to which existing practice-based accounts of managing and organizing can be a helpful point of departure for theorizing self-reinforcing dynamics.

Bourdieu: The power dynamics of social positioning

Arguably, Bourdieu’s theory of practice (1977, 1990) performs best in analysis of the power dynamics of social positioning that operate between individual or collective agents in and across social fields. Put differently, Bourdieu’s theory “foregrounds the structural tension between dominant and dominated actors” (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008, p. 6). This feature makes it especially useful beyond purely Bourdieusian research as well, offering contributions to institutional theory (e.g., Oakes, Townley, & Cooper, 1998; Voronov & Yorks, 2015), sensemaking (Lockett, Currie, Finn, Martin, & Waring, 2014), and stakeholder theory (e.g., Shymko & Roulet, 2017), among others.

Most researchers agree that the explanatory core of Bourdieu’s theory in this regard consists of three interrelated concepts: habitus, field, and capital (Chudzikowski & Mayrhofer, 2011; Golsorkhi, Leca, Lounsbury, & Ramirez, 2009; Sieweke, 2014). Habitus—a system of “durable, transposable dispositions” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 53)—is supposed to mediate between individual agency and societal structure, yet most commentators consider habitus to be closer to the role of structure (e.g., Cardinale, 2018; Layder, 1994). Habitus is acquired by individual actors in an embodied process of intra- and intergenerational socialization and constituted by more or less shared and certainly transposable dispositions. In this respect habitus develops a generative quality, for it helps to produce and maintain structure, even if this process remains generally unknown to knowledgeable actors (Bourdieu, 1990). For this reason, the concept of habitus provides the key to understanding “the paradoxes of objective meaning without subjective intention” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 62). Bourdieu’s theory thus assumes a reality that tends to remain largely opaque to actors, despite the reflexivity attributed to them. The concept of habitus thereby prepares Bourdieu’s focus on recursive reproduction and, hence, the dynamic stability of the actor’s behavior in and sometimes also across a variety of fields.

A field “is conceived of as a terrain of contestation between occupants of positions differentially endowed with the resources necessary for gaining and safeguarding an ascendant position within that terrain” (Emirbayer & Johnson, 2008, p. 6). It is in such fields where a quasi-objectified social order emerges, an order that is likely to be asymmetrical and arbitrary even though it is often perceived as being natural and reasonably fair (Vince & Mazen, 2014). Practitioners, of course, can act within and across different fields. Take, for example, a manager working in the office of her or his employer during the day (field of work) and representing parental interests at a school where that manager’s children are educated in the evening (field of education).

The interrelated social positions that make up a field differ in the qualities and quantities of capital to which they provide access.

Capital is accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its “incorporated,” embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor. (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 241)

The different forms of capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) therefore provide the “social energy,” the momentum, that ultimately drives the transformation of social fields. However, this transformation takes place only insofar as actors have incorporated a habitus that equips them with the practical wisdom necessary for competent handling of the different forms of capital with which their respective social positions are endowed. “The mechanisms of change operating in a field are therefore linked fundamentally to the agents’ capacity to alter the capital distribution structure in pursuit of their own interests” (Malsch & Gendron, 2013, p. 876).

Traces of self-reinforcement in Bourdieusian organization studies

Despite Bourdieu’s emphasis on reproduction, self-reinforcing dynamics are clearly not a core concern in Bourdieusian organization studies. If addressed at all, such dynamics are usually a side topic informing a critical analysis of power relations (see Sieweke, 2014, for an excellent general review of Bourdieusian organization studies). Among the most notable exceptions in this regard are studies that refer to hysteresis (“how habitus is out of sync with field,” Hardy, 2012, p. 144) and symbolic violence (a form of “gentle, invisible violence, unrecognized as such, chosen as much as undergone,” Bourdieu, 1990, p. 127). Comparing studies on hysteresis (e.g., McDonough & Polzer, 2012; Michel, 2014; Śliwa, Kerr, & Robinson, 2021) with those on symbolic violence (e.g., Komoche, Kannan, & Siebers, 2014; Vince & Mazen, 2014) points to a contribution that might be gained through a practice theory account of self-reinforcement. The discerning analysis and representation of social phenomena that are typical of such approaches make it clearer that self-reinforcement expresses itself in very different forms and dynamics, depending on which “self” is being reinforced—something that we refer to in this article as the “locus of self-reinforcement.”

McDonough and Polzer (2012), for instance, found that, because of hysteresis, the delayed reactions to field-level changes were typical of professional groups and genders and hence differed primarily between them rather than between different practices (see Kirschner & Lachicotte, 2001, for a similar case). As a result, the identity and habitus of these groups did not evolve continuously, whereas the practices did. The locus of self-reinforcement, therefore, was the practitioner, not the practice. An interesting contrast surfaces in some of the studies on symbolic violence (e.g., Vince & Mazen, 2014), where the locus of self-reinforcement is the relation between practitioners holding different social positions (e.g., leader vs. follower). Again, the resultant structuring effect does not appear to be primarily on specific practices—the main concern of our article—but rather on power relations among practitioners in a social field.

All in all, this assessment suggests that Bourdieu’s theory might be most helpful for understanding how social fields or individual practitioners—not social practices—become the locus of self-reinforcement. In this context, however, there is a central lesson of general relevance for any practice-based conception of self-reinforcement: the possibility of different loci of self-reinforcement in organizational practice implies that self-reinforcement should not be conceptualized as affecting every aspect of practice in the same way. The result would be stable or inert practices as opposed to dynamic and changing ones. Instead, it seems more likely that, depending on where the locus of self-reinforcement lies, certain aspects of specific practices might become more stable temporarily while others keep changing (Farjoun, 2010). The specific combination of more stable and more dynamic aspects could then result in a developmental trajectory that, in the case of self-reinforcement, would develop momentum of its own.

Giddens: Social practices, systems and structural properties

Giddens’ (1984) theory of structuration is most helpful for understanding the dynamics of social systems as a continuous, historically conditioned development of their structural properties. Importantly, however, Giddens’ theory does not cast these systems as being ontologically distinct from the practices that constitute them. Rather, they are conceived as emerging from social interaction among knowledgeable actors and as exhibiting structural properties that “are both the medium and the outcome of practices that constitute systems” (Giddens, 1979, p. 69). The characteristics of Giddens’s (1979, 1984) theory of practice can also be circumscribed by three closely related concepts: the duality of structure and agency, the conception of actors as being knowledgeable, and the dialectic of control.

The duality of structure (for brevity) provides a rather detailed understanding of what we have labeled recursive reproduction—the broader category of processes of which self-reinforcing processes are a special case. Giddens (1984) establishes that structure is an aggregate outcome of interaction, and both are, therefore, in a recursively reproductive relationship. His conception of the recursive relation between structure and action or interaction helps show that structure not only constrains action but also enables it, not least because structure restrains it. Structure, either instantiated in social practices or reflected in actors’ memory traces (Giddens, 1984), must be enacted and relies on production and reproduction or transformation in and through the practices that either reinforce or change the structural properties of social systems, including organizations.

Actors are assumed to be knowledgeable. Not only do they know about the conditions and consequences of their actions, they are able to put this knowledge into practice. Yet despite efforts to monitor actions and interactions reflexively, including their conditions and consequences, Giddens (1984) stresses that actors do not know everything, for they always act against a background of unacknowledged conditions. What is more, they produce intended as well as unintended consequences and act largely on the basis of practical rather than discursive consciousness. This consciousness enables practitioners “to go on” (Giddens, 1984, p. 43), even if they cannot explain exactly how or why. Giddens’ practice theory thereby sensitizes researchers to how knowledgeable agents with intentions, some of which emerge only within praxis (Dittrich & Seidl, 2018), produce or reproduce structure in at least partly unintended ways. In combination with the understanding of the duality of structure, such awareness creates a pathway for explaining the emergence of systemic dynamics, which—within organizations, for instance—may or may not be consistent with the wants and needs of the very practitioners who contribute to their emergence and continuity.

The dialectic of control, simply but saliently, points to the assumption that knowledgeable actors can always act other than they do, even in “strong situations” (Mischel, 1977), characterized by narrow, intractable constraints. This assumption points to both the possibilities and the limitations of power, defined in its broadest sense as “the capability of ‘making a difference’ to a course of events” (Giddens, 1982, p. 30). In Giddens’ practice theory such power is derived by agents from resources of domination and is particularly effective when supported by complementary rules of signification (that support respective sensemaking) and legitimation (that allow positive sanctioning) that agents competently mobilize. Hence, a Giddensian analysis of larger social systems, such as organizations or interorganizational arrangements, needs to begin with and pay particular attention to resources of domination and to how they, together with rules of signification and legitimation, are enacted in processes of constructing and reconstructing social order or “structuration” through social practices that bind space and time.

Traces of self-reinforcement in Giddensian organization studies

Overall, a Giddensian framework appears to be more suitable than a Bourdieusian for improving the understanding of how social practices can become the locus of self-reinforcing dynamics. This aptness is mostly due to the special attention given to more or less deep structures that exert their influence at the level of social systems such as organizations (see Heracleous & Bartunek, 2021) rather than that of individual actors, as in the case of Bourdieu. However, most studies that draw on Giddens do not go beyond the idea of recursive reproduction (e.g., Den Hond, Boersma, Heres, Kroes, & van Oirschot, 2012; Pozzebon, 2004; Whittington, 2015). One interesting example of a study going one step beyond reproduction is provided by Black, Carlile, and Repenning (2004). They use the ethnographic data collected by Barley (1986) in his seminal study on the introduction of computed tomography scanners in two hospitals. Marrying structuration theory to ideas from system dynamics (Sterman, 2000), Black and colleagues (2004) model the recursive interaction between the accumulating expertise of doctors and technologists on the one hand and the recurrent scanning and diagnosing practices on the other to explain the emergence of different collaboration patterns within this system. The aspects most relevant to our concerns are their elaborations on the potentially recursive relationships between an actor’s involvement in organizational practice and the knowledgeability and competence that such an actor gains from this involvement. This approach casts light on how a behavioral principle as conceived in theories of self-reinforcement can become manifest in practice. Enabling the researcher to move beyond only assuming the existence of behavioral principles per se, such inquiry may help account for their actual emergence in practice. The basic argument is that the more that repetitive engagement in organizational practice increases the performing agents’ knowledgeability and capability (which are important reproductive resources, see above), the greater the risk is of entrenching behavioral patterns that might become difficult to escape. Sydow and colleagues (2012) conducted one of the very few practice-based studies that build on structuration theory and explicitly integrate the notion of self-reinforcement. Of particular relevance for the concerns addressed in this article is the insight that self-reinforcing dynamics should not be conceived of as a gradual reduction of actors “strategic agency,” as is typical for the established theories of self-reinforcement. Seen from a practice perspective, self-reinforcement is instead due to the orientation of the practitioners involved, namely, short time frames in decision-making, a certain risk aversion, or a relatively heavy reliance on already established social relationships (see Sydow et al., 2012, p. 927).

The apparent downside of a Giddensian perspective on self-reinforcement is that it is still beholden to a rather coarse-grained conception of such dynamics, understood as the reproduction or transformation of structural properties of whole systems. This shortcoming also prompts us to consider potential advantages of the flatter ontology that characterizes Schatzki’s approach.

Schatzki: The site of the social as a mesh of practices and arrangements

Schatzki’s (1996, 2002) work rests on the belief that “explanation is a matter of achieving sufficiently detailed surveyable descriptions” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 235). His practice approach therefore has no clear explanatory focus but rather provides a flat ontology of what he labels “the site of the social” (Schatzki, 2002, p. xi). The flatness of his ontology “invites open-minded investigation into why things are happening specifically in the here and now” (Seidl & Whittington, 2014, p. 1416). In this respect, and specifically relevant to us, Schatzki’s practice theory is arguably the one most centered on an understanding of social life in vivo and in situ. A key assumption of his site ontology is that nothing in the social realm happens in isolation but rather in “a specific context of human coexistence” (Schatzki, 2002, p. xi). This context is the site of the social, defined as “a mesh of practices and material arrangements” (Schatzki, 2005, p. 472). Rather than referring back to a necessarily unnuanced and abstract system level, Schatzki refers to the specifics of this mesh to help us understand what “prefigures the flow of activity by qualifying the possible paths it can take” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 44). Descriptions of the mesh, which are firmly rooted in Schatzki’s ontology, use at least three core concepts: social practices, material arrangements, and linkages.

Schatzki (2002) defines social practices as “temporally evolving, open-ended set[s] of doings and sayings linked by practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structures, and general understandings” (p. 87). He thereby explicitly distinguishes his approach from that of Bourdieu and Giddens who, he maintains, overemphasize embodied practical understandings, unduly simplifying the complexities of intentionality. Practical understandings in their theorizing tend to become an all-embracing category that is not readily accessible to empirical observation and is “of doubtful explanatory value” (Schatzki, 1997, p. 301). By contrast, Schatzki strives to specify practical understandings, which he defines as “germane to action as know-hows pertaining to either the performance of actions or the comprehension of things [that] by itself only infrequently determines what people do” (Schatzki, 1997, p. 301). To this viewpoint he adds (a) explicit rules that can differ substantially from and therefore are not merely articulations of practical understandings (see Giddens, 1984); (b) teleoaffective structures, in other words, affective “orientations toward ends and ways things matter that are embodied in the conditions expressed in her activity” (Schatzki, 1997, p. 302); and (c) general understandings, which refer to relatively broad principles that help organize not just one practice but multiple practices. Taken together, these understandings of social practices are “more accepting of structures of intentionality” (Ahrens & Chapman, 2007, p. 8) because doings and sayings are internally organized, not just by the embodied competence and reflexivity of practitioners but also by the normative force of explicit rules, the affectivity of personal ends, and an understanding of broader principles, such as religious beliefs, that transcend multiple practices.

Schatzki (2002) distinguishes such practices from material arrangements. This conceptual differentiation, however, only serves to clarify their interaction and mutual constitution in praxis. Arrangements, for Schatzki, are “a hanging together of entities in which they relate, occupy positions, and enjoy meaning (and/or identity)” (p. 20). In praxis these arrangements are then meshed with practices into a bundle in which “practices effect, use, react to, give meaning to, and are inseparable from arrangements (and the entities composing the latter), [whereas] arrangements induce, channel, prefigure, and are essential to practices (and their constituent activities)” (Schatzki, 2016, p. 5). This conception has some resemblance to ideas from actor network theory (Latour, 2005) and research on sociomateriality (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008) but puts more weight on the relevance of human beings and their doings and sayings when it comes to “maintaining and transforming [the social site’s] forms” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 265).

Above all, Schatzki’s entire work is permeated by an accent on the idea of a nexus—a “linked existence” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 18), which directs analytical attention to the linkages and overlaps between the main elements of the site ontology: sites, practices, arrangements, activities (doings and sayings), and entities (human beings, artifacts, other organisms, and things). Schatzki identifies several types of such linkages, acknowledging that his list is by no means exhaustive. He mentions, for instance, causal relations (when one entity’s actions make something happen or lead to another entity’s action), spatial relations (the spatial ordering of entities), intentionality (when one entity performs actions directed at or has thoughts, beliefs, and emotions about the other), and prefiguration, meaning “how the world channels forthcoming activity” (Schatzki, 2002, p. 44).

Traces of self-reinforcement in Schatzkian organization studies?

Loscher, Splitter, and Seidl (2019) offer an up-to-date review of studies in the field of management and organization, identifying ten studies that make intense, explicit use of Schatzki’s site ontology. Although recursive reproduction figures prominently in most of them, we could not identify any study whose central concern is what we have defined above as self-reinforcement. Equally little has come of attempts to merge Schatzki’s understanding of practices with neoinstitutional theory, what has become known as “practice-driven institutionalism” (Smets, Aristidou, & Whittington, 2017; Smets, Jarzabkowski, Burke, & Spee, 2012; see also Lounsbury et al., 2021). If Schatzki’s practice theory alone does not succeed in that endeavor, such a combination promises to address processes of self-reinforcement, a topic that is anything but new to institutional theory (with respect to processes of diffusion, for instance, see Compagni, Mele, & Ravasi, 2015). However, this line of research still needs to demonstrate that practice theory offers a helpful “microfoundation” of institutional theory. It can do so by also examining processes of institutionalization that veer out of the control of agents—arguably one of the key explanatory foci of (neo-)institutional theory (e.g., Gray, Purdy, & Ansari, 2015; Haack, Sieweke, & Wessel 2019; Powell & Colyvas, 2008; Zilber, 2021).

Although not yet addressed systematically in empirical research, Schatzki’s site ontology clearly focuses on issues central to the initial conceptualization of self-reinforcing practices, as Schatzki (2016) himself also recognizes. Most of all, both the notion of nexus and the understanding of larger social phenomena such as complex organizations or interorganizational networks remain deeply embedded in praxis and therefore appear to be highly promising candidates for advancing the understanding of self-reinforcing practices.

However, the extensiveness of large phenomena means they are “not directly accessible as such through experience, participation, and observation” (Schatzki, 2016, p. 4). Inaccessibility to direct experience, even that of top management in the case of multinational firms, makes large phenomena prone to self-reinforcing dynamics. It also makes large phenomena challenging for practice scholars to describe and explain. It is neither possible (nor useful) to discerningly describe every detail of a large phenomenon’s development over time; researchers need to zoom out (Nicolini, 2012). To do so effectively, they need “concepts [that are] useful for providing overviews of the complicated nexuses of chains that bear on the myriads of changes that make up changes in large phenomena” (Schatzki, 2016, p. 18). In the remainder of this article, we try to build a convincing case for the assertion that the theory of self-reinforcement can be a useful source of inspiration in this regard.

The nexus as the locus of self-reinforcement

As an initial step in this direction, it seems necessary to understand better which “self” can be reinforced, where the locus of self-reinforcement might lie in Schatzki’s world, which he sometimes describes as a “plenum of practices” (e.g., Schatzki, 2021). In this regard we have already argued that self-reinforcing dynamics will most likely not only affect a single, isolated practice, but—as with “clusters of routines” (Kremser & Schreyögg, 2016)—will usually encompass larger phenomena, that is, whole “practice complexes” (Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012). The reason, as already argued, is that larger phenomena can become more easily inaccessible to direct and comprehensive experience (Schatzki, 2016) and are therefore more susceptible to self-reinforcing dynamics. Hence, we assume that analysing self-reinforcing dynamics will usually require collection of data on larger rather than smaller phenomena.

As argued above, it is not feasible for an observer to come up with complete descriptions of large phenomena (which are potentially governed by self-reinforcing dynamics). Instead, capturing large phenomena in empirical research is always “a matter of giving an overview. . . . An overview conveys the gist and significant, salient, or essential features of something without going into extensive details” (Schatzki, 2016, p. 17). To arrive at such a synoptic overview for larger phenomena, the works of a number of practice theorists suggest that the linkages among practices provide an important starting point (Gherardi, 2006; Schatzki, 2016; Shove et al., 2012).

Linkages among practices are enacted through “a series of actions, each component of which reacts to the previous action or to a change in the world that the previous action brought about” (Schatzki, 2016, p. 12). Such chains provide a performative linkage between two practices insofar as actions that enact some part of one practice bring about a change in the world, which is taken up by actions that enact some aspect of another practice. At the most general level, then, one can speak of a linkage between practices if and to the extent that they create relevant contexts for each other—that is, if the enactment of one practice generates conditions that somehow constrain or enable the enactment of another (see also Kremser, Pentland, & Brunswicker, 2019).

From a practice-based perspective that includes all these considerations, the generic locus of self-reinforcement—the “self” that can become reinforced in Schatzki’s world—seems to be best described as a nexus, as a set of performative linkages that connect multiple practices in such a way that they enable and constrain each other. Applying this ontology to our example from Gouldner (1954), one could conceive of the bureaucratic circle as a constitutive part of the gypsum mine understood as a large phenomenon that consists of managerial, rule-making practices interrelated with operative work practices through enabling and constraining performative linkages. The rule-making practices, for example, created a relevant context for the work practices by designing formal rules that ought to be adhered to during performance of these work practices. The work practices, by contrast, created a relevant context for the rule-making practices, for new rules were often based on the experiences of managers during their involvement as supervisors of work practices. To assume that these performative linkages (rather than the practitioner, as with Bourdieu) constitute the locus of self-reinforcement is thus tantamount to implying that the specific (i.e., materially mediated) practice-constraining and -enabling doings and sayings (rather than empirically elusive higher level system structures, as with Giddens) are what can explain the self-reinforcing dynamic of Gouldner’s bureaucratic circle in vivo and in situ.

Distributed remembering as the performative basis of self-reinforcement

There are many different types of mutually enabling or constraining linkages between practices (Hui, Schatzki, & Shove, 2016). However, not all of them may be conducive to self-reinforcement. Many linkages between practices will be well understood by the performing actors and will thus be an unlikely locus of self-reinforcing dynamics. To further specify exactly which linkages or nexus could be conducive to self-reinforcement, we turn to examine the necessary conditions for initiating self-reinforcement as identified above.

The first necessary condition for self-reinforcement is positive, deviation-amplifying feedback. If we take the notion of deviation-amplifying feedback and transfer it to the realm of practices (see also Tsoukas & Pina e Cunha, 2017), we can say that any materially mediated sequence of doings and sayings that is not yet a recognized part of the established pattern of a practice can be defined as a deviation. From research on organizational practices in the tradition of Schatzki or other practice theorists, we know that such deviations arise, for example, in response to new and unexpected events, conflicts, or breakdowns of established expectations (e.g., Lok & de Rond, 2013; Jarzabkowski et al., 2019). If a deviation in one practice (say, a new sequence of doings and sayings) triggers a deviation in another, this change qualifies as an instance of deviation-amplifying feedback within the latter practice. To the extent that two practices generate such instances of deviation-amplifying feedback for one another, we can speak of a deviation-amplifying linkage between these two practices. In more complex organizations or interorganizational networks, the necessary bidirectionality of this relationship will often be established only indirectly, via the “detour” through multiple other practices. This condition is nicely captured with the Schatzkian notion of nexus. In any case, improved understanding of the directly or indirectly established bidirectionality of such a linkage will definitely help explain the origins of the momentum that drives self-reinforcing dynamics.

An example of performative linkages that establish relations of deviation-amplifying feedback among practices appears in Gouldner’s (1954) study. It shows that deviations in the managerial practices were amplified through the emergence of additional deviations—new sequences of doings and sayings—in several work practices. Above all, rules were subsequently supervised much more closely for those work practices that elicited apathy and covert forms of resistance on the side of the workers. This apparent change in the way work practices were enacted was then discussed by managers and led to even more emphasis on rule-based controls. Together, these parts establish a chain of actions that has precisely the qualities that Schatzki (2016) ascribes to performative linkages among practices and simultaneously establishes two-sided deviation-amplifying linkages between managerial and work practices. A main implication of the performativity of these linkages is that any one instance of deviation-amplifying feedback needs to be enacted.

That feedback is therefore only relevant in the here and now, an attribute that brings us to our second necessary precondition of self-reinforcement: a certain minimum frequency of reproduction. In previous research on self-reinforcement, this frequency is often understood to be a function of the depreciation rates of the resources that the respective process needs in order to be reproduced (Sterman, 2000). In a world of social practices, the minimum frequency of reproduction corresponds to the idea that instances of deviation-amplifying feedback need to be continuously re-enacted and thereby remembered in practice. The remembering-in-practice (see also Feldman & Feldman, 2006; Gherardi, 2006) of a deviation-amplifying linkage implies that a deviation is not enacted just once; it becomes a regular and at least informally and implicitly accepted variant in the performance of the linked practices. Especially relevant to our concerns is the point that a performative conception of a linkage between practices also highlights that such a linkage always implies a distributed form of remembering, for each part of such a link, by definition, relies on the enactment of a different practice.

In Gouldner’s (1954) study, for example, close supervision of adherence to rules during performance of work practices was not just an ad hoc variation with no effect on the overall pattern of that work practice but instead eventually became a recognizable part of its pattern. That is, close supervision was not a single but rather a repeated reaction to the perceived efforts to evade work that were discussed during performance of managerial practices. However, not all work practices were affected equally. Instead, Gouldner reported that the self-reinforcing dynamics of the bureaucratic circle had far less effect on work practices in the mines than on those in the factory, two very different locales. He also pointed out that the same was true of the material arrangements. These empirical differences between the work practices in the mine and those of the factory underscore the importance of recognizing that a performative linkage between two practices will always have two parts that are enacted separately—that is, they are enacted repetitively for their own reasons, which make sense in and for the particular practice but perhaps not in and for others. It also illustrates nicely that self-reinforcing dynamics are therefore not likely to affect all the practices constituting a given phenomenon—nor to affect all of them in the same way. Hence, it is critical to track specific linkages between specific practices in order to improve the understanding of the logics and boundedness of self-reinforcing dynamics in a specific case.

The third and final necessary condition for self-reinforcement, as identified in our review of the literature, was that self-reinforcement requires the accumulation of reproductive resources. It generates the necessary momentum for the self-reinforcing dynamic to persist, even if conditions are changing. In Schatzki’s (2002) terms, the reproductive resources of a specific practice are the organizing principles and material arrangements that this practice relies on for its enactment. Expanding our conception of the expectable characteristics of deviation-amplifying linkages, we therefore argue that the instances of deviation-amplifying feedback do not merely need to be enacted repetitively to be remembered-in-practice. Instead, the repetitive enactment of new doings and sayings should be co-constitutive with (a) the adaptation of one or a combination of the four internal organizing principles of practices (practical understandings, rules, teleoaffective structures, and general understandings) and/or (b) a change of the material arrangements meshed with that practice. Insofar as the repetitive enactment of new doings and sayings is one of these constitutive factors, it becomes relatively independent of external triggers, highlighting the distributed nature of the remembering of deviation-amplifying linkages.

The distributed nature of the remembering-in-practice of deviation-amplifying linkages also has a definite bearing on the momentum necessary to sustain self-reinforcing dynamics among practices. Essentially, we have described a dynamic in which deviations in one practice will eventually create a “mirror image” of themselves in another practice. The deviation is quasi-internalized as the new sequence of doings and sayings that is triggered originally by variations in another practice becomes an established part of the organizing principles or material arrangements of that practice. Because organizing principles and material arrangements provide a generative impetus for action within a practice (Schatzki, 2002), their change will be a likely source of new deviations. To the extent that these new deviations then lead to the emergence of additional deviation-amplifying linkages to other practices, the self-reinforcing dynamic will have gained momentum.

Again drawing on empirical data from Gouldner (1954), we can document the momentum generated through the quasi-internalization of deviations from other practices. During the performance of managerial rule-making practices, for example, repeated deviations in the work practices—as covert resistance to specific rules, for instance—resulted in a general understanding that workers are unwilling to work. As a general understanding, this assumption about the workers’ motivation was no longer tied to the managers’ concrete experiences but instead became a structuring force in many different situations or contexts. As a result, experiences with the covert resistance of workers in one specific practice affected the formulation of rules meant to govern a wide variety of other work practices. Rules were no longer created as targeted reactions to experienced deviations but also became a preventive measure against expected deviations.

As summarized in Figure 1, we can further specify the nature of deviation-amplifying linkages by taking the established, rather substantialist understanding of self-reinforcement as an objective behavioral dynamic and systematically translating them on the whole into Schatzki’s more constructivist and social site ontology. These performative linkages can become the locus of self-reinforcement in (inter-)organizational practice, including not only a nexus of practices but also larger-scale material arrangements. Such linkages are performed as instances of positive feedback, in which a deviation in one practice leads to a deviation in another (Figure 1, 1a, 1b). They are remembered in practice as the repetitive enactment of deviations (Figure 1, 2a, 2b) leading to an emergent change in the organizing principles or material arrangements (Figure 1, 3a). This quite likely imparts further momentum to the self-reinforcing dynamic, for the generative nature of organizing principles and material arrangements makes their change in one practice a likely source of new deviations in both it and other practices (Figure 1, 3b–3f).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Nexus of practices as locus of self-reinforcement.

A significant feature of deviation-amplifying linkages is that they essentially constitute a distributed form of remembering (see also Hutchins, 1995). The remembering of such linkages is distributed, for each part of the linkage is enacted separately within each practice and for its own reasons, in other words, against the background of the organizing principles and material arrangements of the respective practice. A performative linkage with these qualities opens the door for dynamics that emerge and envelop performing actors. Such distributed remembering makes it likely that actors, even those within organizations as typically reflexively structured and structuring social systems (Giddens, 1984), will contribute to the enactment of a part of a performative linkage without recognizing the linkage as a whole.

The key proposition that flows from this conceptualization is the insight that a focal practice is likely to be subject to self-reinforcing dynamics to the extent that, at a given time, it has deviation-amplifying linkages to other practices. After all, such linkages subject a focal practice to larger dynamics that emerge among—rather than within—practices, particularly in complex organizations or interorganizational arrangements. At the same time, the practitioners involved might easily fail to notice those linkages because of their distributed nature. Such a lapse allows the dynamic to build up behind the backs of the performing actors. Hence, we posit that a nexus constituted by multiple linkages of this kind is more important for the emergence of self-reinforcing dynamics in a world of practices than for the practitioner or for social relations among practitioners in a field, as with Bourdieu. Likewise, that nexus would be more important for the emergence of self-reinforcing dynamics in a world of practices than for the reproduction of a social system through practices enabled and constrained by structures (rules and resources), as with Giddens.

Deviation-amplifying linkages as a promising focus for future research on self-reinforcement

Addressing deviation-amplifying linkages facilitates exploration of new and pressing questions for empirical research that analyses self-reinforcement in vivo and in situ. It enables organization scholars to engage in practice-based theorizing that is more sensitive to larger dynamics that will often go unrecognized by the very practitioners who enact them. The first and most relevant question in this regard is how researchers can empirically establish that self-reinforcement is at play without having to rely on analysis of the historical development of a focal actor or system. In this regard we have taken key initial steps by elaborating on deviation-amplifying linkages as empirically discernable signs of self-reinforcement. Future research is also needed to improve the effectiveness of methodologies designed to detect linkages among practices that might often go unrecognized even by the practitioners involved. Even if detected, such a linkage can be regarded only as a weak signal of emerging self-reinforcement. The realization that one focal practice is connected to another by a deviation-amplifying linkage suggests merely that self-reinforcing dynamics might be operating at that time. On its own, one such linkage would not suffice to establish the existence of a self-reinforcing dynamic of enough momentum to actually control the practices of the practitioners. Even the systematic identification of an entire complex of practices connected through deviation-amplifying linkages cannot predict any endpoint or outcome of this dynamic. But if practice theory’s ontological commitment to the primacy of the present and the agency of practitioners is to be taken seriously, finding weak signals of self-reinforcement is all that one can hope for.

A focus on deviation-amplifying linkages can also help further clarify which types of performative linkage and which kind of nexus might be more conducive or less conducive to fostering the dynamics of self-reinforcement. To formulate initial indications that could guide future research, we look again to previous research on self-reinforcement in organizations. One key insight is that self-reinforcing dynamics tend to arise without the notice of performing actors (Masuch, 1985). In the context of our practice-based understanding of self-reinforcement, this unawareness poses the question as to which forms of remembering will typically function in a way that creates linkages among practices that the performing actors will remember as linkages. For example, changing the rules that govern one practice could indirectly and, therefore, most likely also inadvertently result in a change in the practical understandings that govern another practice. Because change in organizational rules, particularly formal ones, is usually made intentionally, whereas a change in practical understandings is often an emergent effect, such a combination could be a prototypical pathway to understanding when and how specific unintended consequences come about in practice.

The relevance of the specific combination of different forms of remembering in the previous example also indicates the potential inherent in exploration of the question as to which other possible configurations of remembering are conducive specifically to the dynamics that emerge and envelop practitioners and their practices. Extending this argument, we also know that self-reinforcement often coincides with myopic orientations of agents (e.g., Sydow et al., 2012). This suggests that relevant contributions to the understanding of self-reinforcement could also come from empirical research on the dynamics among practices that emerge from linkages within or across organizational boundaries. Those linkages, at least in one of the connected practices, are constituted by organizing principles that promote myopic orientations, such as teleoaffective structures fostering perceptions of fear and uncertainty during the enactment of a practice (see, for instance, Staw, 1981, for a related argument).

A final example of a potential candidate for a weak signal for self-reinforcement is the linkages that are, at least partially, constituted by material arrangements that are meshed not only with one other but with many different (inter-)organizational practices. Because such material arrangements are not necessarily reflected as linkages within any of those practices, they provide a major pathway to all manner of unintended dynamics. This issue is a common concern in research on “boundary objects” (Star & Griesemer, 1989), which have been shown to play prominent roles in practice-based explanations of the constitution and development of large phenomena, such as intraorganizational clusters or networks of routines (Rosa, Kremser, & Bulgacov, 2021).

In summary, instead of having to rely on historical analysis, a practice-based conceptualization of self-reinforcement can help identify weak signals suggesting the possibility that a specific practice is becoming enveloped in a larger dynamic of self-reinforcement among multiple, interrelated practices. Essentially, we have used the literature on self-reinforcement and have integrated core insights from this research into practice-based theorizing to develop an answer to the question of what a focal practice would look like if it were enveloped in a self-reinforcing dynamic. The result offers a more sophisticated understanding of the relevance and role of deviation-amplifying linkages among practices enacted through distributed forms of remembering. This advance indicates that much still remains to learn about self-reinforcement from analytical empirical studies on the differential effects of specific configurations of remembering in practice.