Organizational routines and regional industrial paths: the IT service industry in the US National Capital Region

Abstract

This study aims to address how organizational routines could affect the business activities and regional industrial paths of organizations by conducting a case study of the information technology (IT) service industry in Fairfax County in the US state of Virginia. Specifically, it analyzes the interwoven processes among three factors in the evolution of a knowledge-based regional industry, namely, organizational routines of local IT service firms, industrial knowledge bases and regional specificity. Empirical results explain the mechanisms of the adaptation processes of heterogeneous actors when two groups of disparate market-oriented routines exist. The integrated framework linking these three factors can provide explicit perspectives for understanding the context-specific evolution of clusters.