The ubiquity of habits and routines and their contribution to management theory

Geoff Hodgson has contributed to the recognition that habits and routines help explain a range of human behavior of interest to economics and management. Habits are dispositions to behave in certain ways that have temporal and ontological priority over intention and reason, and play a key role in the mutual constitution of individuals and structures. Institutions influence individual behavior by influencing individuals’ habits which, when shared in an organizational context, grow into routines. The chapter assesses the impact of these insights in management journals, and shows that significant untapped opportunities for advancing management theory remain. Specifically, a habit-based conception of human agency fits phenomena involving individual-level or organization-level behavioral inertia, and therefore offers a basis for attempts to change individual behavior or induce organizational change that does not rely on incentives or information that alter, respectively, objective or perceived costs and benefits.