Organizational rules (standard operating procedures) are, at the same time, enabling and restraining. They are enabling, because, e.g., they represent highly effective coordination instruments and serve as stores of organizational knowledge. On the other hand, they tend to develop a dynamics...

This paper deals with organizational rules as storages for organizational knowledge and media for organizational learning. The discussion starts with a revisiting of the first rule based theory of organizational learning, the Behavioral Theory of the Firm, that was developed by Richard Cyert and...