Artefacts, agency, and project routines: A routine dynamics view on managing the sustainability programme of incumbent firms

The sustainable transition strategy of an incumbent firm often takes the form of programmes of interrelated projects that typically are more novel, complex, or uncertain than projects in the incumbent’s core business. Adopting the routine dynamics view, this study explores how existing project routines develop, as organizations engage in projects within the sustainable transformation programme. Comparing and contrasting across three cases of substantial transitionary ambitions within two organizations, we discuss the role of artefacts – both existing and newly created – and forms of exercising agency in the emergence of new project routines. We discuss the evolution of project routines across different phases of the sustainable transition, highlighting how entanglement of project routines with organizational routines shapes how agency is enacted in the face of routines that are no longer effective for the task at hand.