Marlot Kuiper

152 Connective Routines Figure 10&11: Stratification of the ostensive dimension across (left) and within (right) professional groups 5.6.2 Social mechanisms mediate routine dynamics The idea that ostensive aspects might be diverse, for instance because of different professional perspectives, has found its way in literature about routines. Nonetheless, it remained rather unclear how multiple, individual understandings evolve into collective understandings, and hence, performances. The findings of this chapter elucidate some of the mechanisms mediating routine dynamics. Role taking, hierarchy and the strength of connections and ‘connective potential’ affect which patterns become dominant, and are therefore decisive for professional performances. Role taking The idea of ‘role taking’ is valuable in understanding how different subjective of understandings of the checklist find their way in practices. Mead (1934) already argued that through taking the role of others, individual patterns of action fit together to form joint action. Each individual aligns his or her action to the action of others by identifying the social activity in which they are about to engage and by learning what those others are doing, or what they intend to do, in forming the joint action (see also Blumer, 1969). For instance, in a football match, what a player does depends on his or her assumption of the actions that his or her team players will take. Role taking thus refers to anticipating others’ behaviours. In some of the observed performances of the checklist routine however, actants stuck to their own role rather than anticipating on others and aligning their practices with other participants. The orthopaedic surgeon who was about to perform knee arthroscopies on all “healthy people” did not anticipate on the role of the anaesthesiologist and performed a more independent action pattern. In the