Feldman and Rafaeli (
2002) were first to contemplate that through enacting routines, connections between people are established based on interpersonal interactions. They defined connections as “interactions between people that enable them to transfer information” (Feldman and Rafaeli
2002: 312). Focusing on connections of actors helps to elevate on the role of actors in organizational routines. Connections provide knowledge about other actors of the routine, other members’ tasks and perceptions of the routine. Hence, connections between actors of an organizational routine create a shared understanding. According to Dionysiou and Tsoukas (
2013: 193) shared understandings imply not that individual schemata become identical, but that individual understandings are at minimum either compatible or congruent. This enables individuals to anticipate behavior of others, provides guidance how to behave and supports in interpreting information. Moreover, emerging ties between actors may be more positively or negatively evaluated compared to others. Shared understandings and the quality of the connections between actors are likely to influence how people act. Thus, shared understandings help either to maintain a pattern of actions or to adapt to variation in the environment (Feldman and Rafaeli
2002). Moreover, some variations are likely to occur because actors need to adapt their actions to other actors to whom they are connected (Feldman and Rafaeli
2002). Dionysiou and Tsoukas (
2013), using a symbolic interactionist perspective (Mead
1934), have argued that actors identify themselves with the social activity in which they engage in, trying to determine what their counterparts are doing and matching their activities complementarily or congruently. By doing this, actors try to develop a shared understanding. Building on the importance of connections, Turner and Rindova (
2012) revealed that team members’ actions and understandings coalesce the longer team members work together, thus reducing variation. Sele and Grand (
2016) went one step further by saying that connections between routines “are not automatic, but unfold in action” (734). In their study they indicated that actants can act either as intermediaries, merely maintaining connections, or as mediators, modifying connections between routines. Danner-Schröder and Geiger (
2016) indicated in their study that the establishment of a shared understanding is an effortful enactment which can be reached through intensive rehearsals. Based on different rehearsal methods and differences in the codification of artifacts, the emerging shared understanding helped actors to orient their actions more towards stabilization or flexibility, according to the situation. Bucher and Langley (
2016) revealed that by creating reflective spaces new connections could emerge that envisioned new ostensive patterns, whereas experimental spaces created connections to change performances. Bapuji et al. (
2012) analyzed the influence of intermediaries as an exchange medium in interactions to create connections. Intermediaries are used to transmit the intentions of one actor to another. Thereby, the authors distinguished weak and strong routines, and found that actions and their expected responses by different actors meet less often across iterations in weak routines than in strong routines (Bapuji et al.
2012: 1590). Strong routines referred to routines staying rather stable across several iterations, whereas in weak routines variance could be observed.