Hagen Schaudt

• Routines are an everyday phenomenon and traditionally have been seen as mainly static. The current view on organizational routines however changed the overall conception of routines to a source of continuous change and therefore opened an entirely new focus upon the field. Research addressing this focus led to the understanding, that routines can be both a source of organizational stability as well as a source of flexibility and change. This is because of the influence of the actors which enact those routines. Since those actors think, feel and care and thus breathe life into routines it is beneficial to further deepen our understanding about their influences on organizational routines. Even though the potential for change lies within the actor, only little light has been shed on the effect of emotions concerning the dynamics of routines. This is somehow surpris-ing, since emotions have become a recognized aspect of our organizational life over the years, and the importance of emotions in day-to-day activities has been confessed openly by many researchers. Therefore, the guiding questions of this dissertation are how emotions influence the dynamics of routines and how the enactment of routines influences emotions? This is being explored over three papers. The first paper reviews the overlaps of routine and emotion research. The second and third papers are based on an ethnographic field study. Considering the insiders’ emotions in the second paper and the outsiders’ emotions in the third paper sheds light on the emotions of all routine participants and therefore aids in a more comprehensive understanding of the topic.