Drivers of complexity in organizational routines – Insights from a digital trace data study

Hartl, Sophie; Franzoi, Sandro; Grisold, Thomas; vom Brocke, Jan

Abstract

Routine complexity describes the multiplicity of all possible paths that can be taken to perform
a routine. Building on the increasing interest in routine complexity, we aim to identify how and
why routine complexity changes, that is, we search for influencing factors that increase or
decrease the number of all possible paths to perform a given routine. We build on digital trace
data from a customer onboarding routine at a financial institution in Central Europe. We
investigate how changes on the associated low-code platform affect the complexity of the
routine. Combining insights from computationally intensive theorizing with contextual
knowledge about the routine, we find that complexity is mainly driven by planned changes (e.g.
a new feature is added to the process) and ad-hoc changes (e.g. an issue in the software code is
resolved with a bug fix). Our work contributes to research on routine complexity in two central
ways. First, we add to existing research on routine complexity by investigating how and why
complexity changes over time. Second, by studying a continuously adapting low-code platform,
we provide a new perspective on the influence of information systems on routine dynamics.

Keywords
Routine complexity; digital trace data