Organizational Script Development Through Interactive Accommodation

Scripts, a type of cognitive structure that retains knowledge of events for a particular context, have been used to research recall and recognition tasks but have been largely neglected in the study of organizational settings. In this study the major focus is on the development of common scripts by organizational members for a frequently occurring organizational activity. This study demonstrates how members of a simulated, nascent organization come to adopt a set of tasks for accomplishment of a joint activity through interactive accommodation of subunit goals. Over time tasks co-evolve into a well-known pattern of events for the activity. We provide evidence of the development of organizational scripts, that is, cognitive and behavioral, across organizational members for the pattern of events associated with the activity.