Sylvain Lenfle
email: sylvain.lenfle@eco.u-cergy.fr

Christophe Midler
email: christophe.midler@shs.polytechnique.fr

THE LAUNCH OF INNOVATIVE SERVICES: LESSONS FROM AUTOMOTIVE TELEMATICS

In the literature on NPD, most existing studies on the end of the design process concentrate on managing ramp-up of manufactured products. However our economies increasingly depend upon services. This article examine the management of the final phases of the design process of an innovative service. Our research make three contributions : 1) we show that the concept of ramp-up is insufficient for understanding the phenomena at works. The nature of services means that two types of learning -technical and sales -take place at the same time. 2) an analysis of the data collected confirms this difference by bringing to light great contrasts in these two dimensions. 3) This led us to identify a new field for NPD research : the design of the sales process.

INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH QUESTION

The central role played by innovation in corporate strategy has given rise to a significant stream of research on new product design [START_REF] Brown | Product development : past research, present findings, and future directions[END_REF]. While this work has undoubtedly helped researchers and practitioners better understand and master the design process, certain weaknesses are nevertheless clear. For instance, in a recent review of the literature, [START_REF] Krishnan | Product development decisions : a review of the literature[END_REF] show that this work focuses excessively on the development phases per se; in particular, they demonstrate that the final phases in the design process for new products (tests on pilot sites, ramp-up and launch) have been more or less ignored. Yet in their 1991 study, Clark & Fujimoto had already emphasized the crucial importance of these phases, which to a great extent determine the future success of a product. Unanticipated quality problems that handicap a new product's reputation and hence its sales, or an inability to achieve expected yields, generally result in the loss of potential customers and postpone the return on investment. [START_REF] Cooper | Winning at new product : accelerating the process from idea to launch[END_REF] also highlighted the importance of the strategy adopted at launch for the success or failure of new products.

In the literature on new product development, most existing studies on the end of the design process generally concentrate on managing ramp-up. This work has highlighted the importance of the strategies implemented by managers (i.e. [START_REF] Terwiesch | Learning and Process Improvement during Production Ramp-up[END_REF] and the basic link that exists between the work conducted during development and the quality of ramp-up [START_REF] Langowitz | An exploration of production problems in the initial commercial manufacture of products[END_REF][START_REF] Clark | Product development performance. Strategy, organization and management in the world auto industry[END_REF]. Nonetheless, for the most part this work focuses on the study of these issues in the field of manufactured products and neglect the specific issue of marketing (design of the marketing plan, the training of sales personnel and so on). This situation poses a problem at a time when a great deal of research is showing that our economies increasingly depend upon services [START_REF] Gadrey | Socio-économie des services[END_REF]. As [START_REF] Thomke | R&D comes to service. Bank of America's pathbreaking experiment[END_REF] observed, the focus in the literature on product innovation is the likely explanation for the relative lack of proven methods for the development of new services. Indeed, existing work on innovation in services agrees on one point: in service companies, the process of design/innovation is relatively informal, providing a partial explanation for the problems frequently seen in the development of new services, such as missed deadlines and inadequate quality [START_REF] Gallouj | L'innovation dans les services[END_REF][START_REF] Jallat | Le management de l'innovation dans les entreprises de services : spécificité des processus et facteurs de performances[END_REF]Flipo, 2001). This is all the more regrettable given that service innovation is not limited to "pure" service companies (banks, insurance, transport, business services etc.); industrial firms are also increasingly using product-related services to stand out from the competition and to offer their clients customized solutions [START_REF] Furrer | Le rôle stratégique des services autour du produit[END_REF][START_REF] Cusumano | The business of Software[END_REF]. This article will examine the management of the final phases of the design process of an innovative service. While the literature on service innovation proposes theoretical models of the design process (Shostack, 1984;[START_REF] Lovelock | Developing and implementing new services[END_REF]Scheuing & Jonhson, 1989;[START_REF] Edvardsson | New service development and innovation in the new economy[END_REF], it does not pay much attention to the final phases of the process (ramp-up, to the extent that this concept has much meaning for services, and marketing)1 . They agree on the importance of conducting tests before service launch, but also show that these tests are rarely performed in practice [START_REF] Eiglier | Servuction. Le marketing des services[END_REF][START_REF] Gallouj | L'innovation dans les services[END_REF][START_REF] Jallat | Le management de l'innovation dans les entreprises de services : spécificité des processus et facteurs de performances[END_REF]. There is, however, reason to believe that these final steps in design play a crucial role in the success or failure of a new service, just as they do for products.

We will consider these issues using an inductive research method [START_REF] Glaser | Strategies for qualitative research[END_REF], which [START_REF] Eisenhardt | Building theories from case study research[END_REF] showed was relevant for exploring issues that were new for researchers and practitioners. An interactive study [START_REF] Berry | Research and the practice of management : a french view[END_REF] conducted for three years within a European carmaking company (here called Telcar) enabled us to take part in the real-time design process and then in the marketing of a new telematics service. In a previous article [START_REF] Lenfle | Innovation in automotive telematic services : characteristics of the field and management principles[END_REF], we presented the issues related to the development of telematics services and the organizational response adopted by Telcar. Here we will concentrate on the more specific issue of the launch of this service. This article will make three contributions. An analysis of the implementation process in the case of services shows, first, that the concept of ramp-up is insufficient for understanding the phenomena involved in the launch of an innovative service. The simultaneity of the production and consumption of a service means that two types of learning -technical and sales -take place at the same time. The commercial dimension is not treated in studies on ramp-up, and it is therefore necessary to draw on other literature. Second, an analysis of the data collected confirms this difference by bringing to light great contrasts in these two aspects of learning. This led us to identify a field that needs exploration by researchers in product and services innovation: the design of the sales process.

We begin by discussing the notion of a product launch and showing that this involves two different processes: the ramp-up of a production system and a sales launch. We then study the transferability of this concept to the world of services. Then, having described the role of services in the car industry, we analyze what is new in the service under study. We then show the problems that designers must deal with during the launch phase. Finally, we present the data collected during the first 17 months of marketing the service. An analysis of these results shows the relevance of the results obtained in the case of products, as well as their limitations. But this case also suggests that the development of the sales process for a product or service has still not been given great attention. We conclude by pointing out that this is an important area for researchers in the management sciences.

THE LAUNCH OF A NEW PRODUCT: PHYSICAL GOODS VS. SERVICES

In their critical review of the literature on new product development, [START_REF] Krishnan | Product development decisions : a review of the literature[END_REF] put ramp-up and product launch in the same phase; however, in the rest of their article the only work they cite in fact concerns ramp-up. We feel that this is indicative of the ambiguity of research on the development of new products, which -as the summary of Krishnan & Ulrich illustrates by default -harbours a significant technical bias and leaves aside the issue of the commercial launch.

Here we consider product launch to incorporate what are actually two different processes: the start-up of production in normal conditions, generally called ramp-up, and the commercial launch of the product.

The literature on new product development, which is already sparse on the first issue, is silent on the second, which is, on the other hand, dealt with in the literature on marketing. The lack of communication between these two fields is due, in the case of products, to the de-coupling of these two processes. Chronologically, ramp-up precedes marketing, even though in practice there is some overlap. The literature on marketing thus assumes that products are available in the desired quantity and quality. This hypothesis is of some relevance, to the extent that the time gap between the two processes2 makes corrections possible if, for example, the products are not of the required quality. Before studying the case of services, it is necessary to present the main results of this research, which we will consider in turn.

Ramp-up of manufactured products

In the literature on new product development, the final phases of the design process are mainly studied under the concept of "ramp-up". As is specified in Wheelwright & Clark (1992, p. 8): "In ramp-up, the firm starts commercial production at a relatively low level of volume; as the organization develops confidence in its (and its suppliers') ability to execute production consistently and in marketing's ability to sell the product, the volume increases. At the conclusion of the ramp-up phase, the production system has achieved its target levels of volume, cost and quality." Ramp-up thus occurs as the last stage of development: the design of the product and of the process are complete; prototypes have been made and tested; and now the transition is made to production in real conditions. The goods produced in this phase are intended for sale; goals for yields and quality thus play a major role.

Ramp-up is therefore the ultimate test of the quality of the design work. Research on the subject has shown that it must be viewed as a key learning opportunity. It has revealed three important points in the case of products, as follows: 1. The fundamental role of the design work preceding ramp-up (strictly speaking)

and the way the project as a whole constitutes preparation for this phase [START_REF] Langowitz | An exploration of production problems in the initial commercial manufacture of products[END_REF][START_REF] Clark | Product development performance. Strategy, organization and management in the world auto industry[END_REF].

2. The importance companies place on the management of this phase, as more and more frequently they set up teams specifically to manage it. Implementation is thus treated as an extension of the innovation process [START_REF] Leonard-Barton | Implementation as mutual adaptation of technology and organization[END_REF]. [START_REF] Terwiesch | An Exploratory Study of Product Transfer and Production Ramp-up in the Data Storage Industry[END_REF] show the positive impact the establishment of specialized teams for managing this phase has had in the case of the hard disk industry. 3. And, consequently, the differences in performance observed among firms that adopt very different strategies in this area. Research in this field has, for example, shown the impact of variables like training and change management [START_REF] Adler | Behind the learning curve : a sketch of the learning process[END_REF], experimentation strategies (Terwiesch et Xu, 2001 ;[START_REF] Terwiesch | Learning and Process Improvement during Production Ramp-up[END_REF], industrial strategies [START_REF] Clark | Product development performance. Strategy, organization and management in the world auto industry[END_REF], and capitalizing on previous experience [START_REF] Charue-Duboc | Usage et production de connaissance dans une usine automobile : un processus d'apprentissage organisationnel in F. Charue-Duboc. Des savoirs en action[END_REF].

The launch of a new product : the case of physical goods

The subject of product launch and marketing has been covered by many marketing and strategy studies, which have examined the impact of the strategy adopted during launch on the diffusion of innovation and, consequently, on a company's profitability. The goal is to accelerate diffusion in order to reduce the ROI time. Two trends in this literature can be outlined:

-The first deals with strategic issues. [START_REF] Lieberman | First-mover advantage[END_REF] devote great attention to the advantages and strategic risks of the first-mover, whereas the classic marketing texts (for example, [START_REF] Kotler | Marketing Management[END_REF] highlight the main strategies possible during the launch of a new product. At a general level they oppose the strategies of a mass launch -mobilizing every marketing lever, at great cost, to accelerate diffusion -in favour of a more prudent approach that focuses on early adopters and that limits the resources committed.

-The second current studies the levers of action available during the launch of a new product and their impact on diffusion. This has led to several significant results: 1. [START_REF] Rogers | Diffusion of Innovations[END_REF] underlined the importance of early adopters of a new product regarding the process of diffusion, thus highlighting the importance of choosing the first customers to be targeted at launch. More recently, [START_REF] Moore | Inside the Tornado[END_REF] has shown the limits of this reasoning and the need to adapt a company's strategy to cross the chasm that separates early adopters from the mass of potential customers. 2. Customers are not the only targets at launch; for a company to gain acceptance for its innovation, it must also convince distributors, who will sell and recommend the product to customers, and producers of related goods, who in some cases determine how attractive it is [START_REF] Gawer | Platform leadership[END_REF]. This process of training partners is long and expensive. 3. Finally, the literature discusses the impact of different variables in the marketing mix on how consumers greet an innovation [START_REF] Manceau | Lancement de nouveaux produits[END_REF]. It emphasizes in particular: a. The importance of the simplicity of the initial product and the range offered in order to facilitate customer uptake. b. The role of communications that help explain the benefits of the product offered and contribute to promoting its image among future purchasers.

The tests organized at launch can play a significant role in adoption. c. Various price strategies, depending on whether the goal is rapid market penetration (low price) or a quick return on investment (skimming through a high price).

The specific character of services

Even though the two trends in literature provide solid results in the case of physical goods, there is a question with regard to how transferable these outcomes are to the world of services. Three points need to be taken into account.

First, it is interesting to note that with regard to the issue of the launch itself, the results are similar to the case of physical goods; [START_REF] Eiglier | Servuction. Le marketing des services[END_REF] thus emphasize the importance of clear communications and the simplicity of a new concept offered to customers. Likewise, [START_REF] Lovelock | Developing and implementing new services[END_REF] and [START_REF] Scheuing | A proposed model for new service development[END_REF] point out the importance of training those personnel who are in contact with customers given that services are co-produced with them, without, however, explaining which actions might be relevant.

However, after this initial approximation, it is not possible to separate production and marketing due to the structural characteristics of services [START_REF] Eiglier | Servuction. Le marketing des services[END_REF][START_REF] Grönroos | Service Management and Marketing : Managing the moments of Truth in Service Competition[END_REF]. In services production takes place simultaneously with the sale. In these conditions, i) it is very difficult to "correct" defects3 , and ii) customer dissatisfaction is immediate and frequently insurmountable [START_REF] Zeithaml | Delivering Quality Services[END_REF]. The first marketing is thus very much a moment of truth (Norman, 1991) that will, to a great extent, determine the success or failure of the new service. In the case of services, the launch phase also involves the initial months of marketing the service, so it does not include the tests conducted during the design process, tests that are intended to prepare for marketing. We will consider the consequences of simultaneous production/sales later in this paper.

Finally, to our knowledge the notion of ramp-up has never been used in the case of services. This raises a question about whether this concept and the results from the realm of products are applicable. In the case of physical goods, monitoring rampup particularly involves the determination of an observation point (in general, the factory) and the definition of indicators used to guide the phase (in general, productivity and quality). Studies on the subject thus typically measure the time required for different plants to achieve "normal" levels of productivity and quality and/or to explain any differences according to the strategies implemented before and during ramp-up [START_REF] Clark | Product development performance. Strategy, organization and management in the world auto industry[END_REF][START_REF] Terwiesch | Learning and Process Improvement during Production Ramp-up[END_REF]. In the case of services, we will hence have to determine the appropriate performance indicators and deal with the problems posed by the heterogeneous character of the network.

The launch of an innovative service thus raises particular questions. By studying the case of telematics services, we will be able to specify the phenomena involved during the launch of an innovative service and to show the value and limits of observations from the study of physical goods.

THE AUTOMOBILE AND SERVICE INNOVATION: THE CASE OF EMERGENCY AND BREAKDOWN CALLS

The context and design of the service

Carmaking constitutes a typical example of an industry that offers a productservice pair [START_REF] Eiglier | Servuction. Le marketing des services[END_REF]. Even if historically the product-service couple is in this case dominated by the product, carmakers offer their customers a wide range of services aimed at facilitating the car's purchase (credit), repair (maintenance) and availability (breakdown assistance), or all three simultaneously (via a combined monthly fee). This trend to develop car-related services has been recently boosted by using ICT to offer customers new types of "telematics services" (address dispatch, route-finder services, remote diagnostics, location-enhanced emergency calls and more). Making room for new service possibilities is a significant innovation for carmakers, which are embarking on a field that they have not yet mastered.

Here we will concentrate on the case of E/B Call, an emergency & breakdown call service that began at Telcar in 20014 . As the name indicates, the concept involves offering customers a service that allows them to call a number for help in case of an accident or breakdown. The call (made automatically in an accident) is used to determine the vehicle's precise location. The service may appear to be an a priori extension of the assistance services that have long been offered by carmakers. However, a detailed analysis of the design work [START_REF] Lenfle | Innovation in services : the contribution of design theory[END_REF] shows that, on the contrary, this represents a major departure in several areas simultaneously. It requires:

1. Developing product support that permits communication with and location of the vehicle, including when a crash occurs. 2. Solving the legal issues raised by an emergency service (i.e. who is responsible if a problem arises during the emergency procedure?). 3. Setting up a front office, in the knowledge that the one offering the service (the dealer network) is not the same as the one performing it (a partner specializing in assistance). 4. Designing and setting up a complex back office, comprising:

-A telecommunications infrastructure that can locate the vehicle in an extremely short time and with a high degree of reliability. -Information systems that can record service contracts and handle invoicing, and then deal with internal data to manage customer relations. 5. Developing a business model that ensures the financing of a service that, according to all those involved, is "difficult to sell".

The complexity of the service can be seen in the course of the design process. Telcar did not in fact have the internal competences necessary and had never before marketed this type of service. Our analysis of the unfolding of the project shows that the team encountered three main difficulties: a) Setting up a communications/emergency infrastructure proved to be much more complex than originally thought. For example, the tests organized during design revealed recurring difficulties in locating the vehicles and inadequate training on the part of phone operators. The system was late in being declared operational. b) Developing the sales procedure as a dealer service required a great deal of backand-forth between the project team and the Telcar sales department. The latter wanted to streamline the procedure for service registration, which in particular provides for 1) signing a contract, and 2) a registration call between the seller and customer. The involvement of the manager of the Telematics project finally convinced the sales department to accept this solution. c) The discussion of the sales process was complicated by legal issues. The Telcar legal staff emphasized the need for the customer to sign a contract, given the special nature of emergency calls and the risks run by the carmaker in case of problems. These discussions were also at the root of the lag in marketing.

The problem: Integrating technical and commercial learning

The case of the E/B Call helps us understand the phenomena involved in launching an innovative service. For this purpose, we use the model proposed by [START_REF] Shostack | How to design a service ? in Marketing of services[END_REF] and then developed by J. Kingman-Brundage (1989). This tool, called a "blueprint", helps to identify the main steps involved in delivering the service and, for each step, the process and people involved in it. Two levels can be distinguished in the process of service marketing ("servuction"), corresponding to the classic distinction between front and back office:

1. People in contact with the customers (interaction line).

2. The process supporting these people, which is invisible to the customer (line of visibility). Applying this model to the case of the location-enhanced emergency call, we obtain the following diagram, which represents a simplified version of the servuction process and consists of only two steps (Figure 1). Two points in particular distinguish the case of services from that of physical goods. First, due to the co-production and non-material nature of the service, the system must be operational from the first day it is marketed (after all, a customer could have an accident only moments after subscribing to the service). Unlike the situation with regard to products, the start of production cannot be dissociated from the start of marketing. The ramp-up and marketing phases are thus intertwined. This simultaneity creates additional problems for the project team: unlike physical goods, it is impossible to take back a service after a defect has been noticed. As is clear, however, there are many potential sources of defects: they could come from the front office and/or the process established, in this case the registration of customers during the sale, the localization of the vehicle and the organization of assistance5 .

Second, while the notion of ramp-up emphasizes the technical aspect of learning with regard to the capacity to produce the product correctly, in this case the two processes of learning identified in Section 2 take place simultaneously:

• The first (left part of Figure 1) concerns the effectiveness of the process of selling the service. In the case of the E/B Call, this takes place mainly at the dealership and involves the sales staff above all.

• The second (right part of Figure 1) involves the production of the service itself, i.e. locating the vehicle and organizing assistance or repairs. It concerns those involved in the assistance system, as well as the entire communications and assistance back office, which, it should be recalled, is where the main innovations are concentrated.

The difficulty is thus to understand the determinants of the learning process. After presenting the results of the study of the E/B Call case, in the last section we will discuss the most relevant analytical approaches for understanding the phenomena involved and the determinants of a successful launch.

THE LAUNCH PROCESS

The monitoring indicators

As mentioned in section 2, to organize the launch the team need to define observation methods and performance criteria. The difficulties encountered in service design led the project managers to define three different indicators to monitor the implementation of service marketing:

1. The reliability rate measures the ratio between the properly located calls and the total number of calls. It estimates the reliability of the back office, which comprises the telecommunications infrastructure set up to locate vehicles and then organize assistance. This first indicator thus measures the quality of the "technical" design work performed by the team (right part of Figure 1). 2. The rate of contract subscriptions measures the ratio between the number of customers who might subscribe (those whose car is equipped with a telematics module) and those who actually subscribe. It measures the effectiveness of the "internal marketing" work performed by the project team. The work on service innovation illustrates the difficulties that exist for mobilizing downstream personnel, in particular those in the front office. As [START_REF] Thomke | R&D comes to service. Bank of America's pathbreaking experiment[END_REF], for example, has shown, the latter are always torn between the need to complete their day-to-day tasks and the effort that is required to assimilate the procedures intrinsic to any new service. One could therefore conclude that the effectiveness of the "sales" dimension of the service launch depends on the training/evangelization efforts of the project team prior to marketing. There are two other particularly interesting features concerning the emergency call service offered by Telcar:

• It is free for customers; as a result, the contract subscription rate is not influenced by cost considerations and could be considered a relatively "pure" measure of the work done to design the service marketing set-up. • Likewise, the company decided not to promote the service initially except through its network; it was thus mainly sales personnel who were promoting the service. 3. The rate of registration calls measures the ratio between the number of customers actually subscribing to the service and the number of registration calls really made. As already explained, the marketing process provides for a call between the salesperson and the customer to record certain customer data. This third rate helps to refine the extent to which the network has assimilated the procedures designed upstream.

Presentation of the data collected

Our participation in the Telcar project gave us access to a wealth of material. The following graphics page (Figure 2) presents the changes in the three preceding indicators over a 17-month period, starting with marketing. At this point, the team believed that the system was functioning "normally", at least from a technical viewpoint. The reliability rate for localization has stabilized since the end of March at above the initial goal of 95% (red line on the figure).

Figure 3: Reliability of localization between the fourth and eighth months following launch

This immediately gives rise to several observations about ramp-up: 1. At the technical level, the tests performed before service marketing were not adequate to deal with all the uncertainties. The first quarter was marked by a low reliability rate (blue curve). 2. The reliability rate improved regularly with time: in 17 months, it thus rose from less than 50% to stabilize at above 90% in the 11 th month, achieving the targeted 95% by the end of the 14 th month. A detailed study of the changes in this rate provides greater detail regarding the technical ramp-up. Figure 3 thus shows that the team managed to solve the main problems between the fourth and eighth months following launch. Between these two dates, the localization reliability rate, this time calculated on a weekly basis, rose from below 20% to 90%. Variations in this rate, in particular the trough seen for Week 22, nevertheless show the difficulty for a carmaker with regard to mastering a completely innovative back office. 3. However, this represents only the technical dimension of ramp-up. If we now consider the rates for subscription and registration calls, i.e. the "commercial" dimension of ramp-up, the situation is very different. These two indicators have a dual characteristic:

• They are relatively low (between 30 and 40% for the subscription rate, below 30% for the service registration calls). • They are stable over time, reflecting the relative lack of learning during the period under consideration. The data collected on the E/B Call case thus reveals two very different curves, depending on whether the "technical" or "commercial" aspect of the service is considered. This difference is explained in Section 5.

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

We will use two theoretical frameworks to explain the changes presented in the preceding section. First, we will show the relevance of the results of the research on ramp-up in the case of services with regard to products (cf. Section 2): the nature of the design work upstream from launch and the organization of the launch per se thus contribute to a better understanding of the data collected. The paradox represented by the statistical refutation of our second hypothesis will thereby be explained in part, but we believe that this theoretical framework needs to be supplemented. More specifically, the case of E/B Call brings to light a field that has been little studied by research on new product design: the design of the sales process. This will be the subject of the third part of our analysis.

The importance of the upstream preparatory work

The difficulties encountered by Telcar are due first of all to the quality of the work performed upstream. In their 1991 study, Clark & Fujimoto link the superiority of Japanese companies to the quality of their upstream design work, which enables them to anticipate the problems that arise during ramp-up. These firms thus regain their former levels of productivity and quality 10 times faster than their Western competitors. We believe that the same phenomena are at work in the case of the emergency call service and that this partially explains the differences observed between the technical and commercial dimensions.

The establishment of the technical infrastructure was thus subject to intensive design work even if, as we've explained, many difficulties arose: a specialist team worked on the question, involving suppliers, and tests were performed under real conditions, which made it possible, if not to eliminate all defects, to at least identify their possible causes. Preliminary tests, for example, led to modification of service platform operators' scripts and improvement in their training. The team was thus prepared to handle the difficulties that arose during marketing, so the low rate of localization calls during the first weeks of marketing were more indicative of the difficulty of perfecting an unprecedented telecommunications infrastructure than of inadequacies in the upstream design work.

Conversely, the design work on the marketing process was much less intense. In this dimension of the project, the way the design process worked was similar to the sequential operations whose limits were described by [START_REF] Wheelwright | Revolutionizing product development. Quantum leaps in speed, efficiency and quality[END_REF]. There were thus very logical weaknesses in this type of organization:

• Downstream activities, in particular the sales department, were integrated belatedly into the project team [START_REF] Lenfle | Innovation in automotive telematic services : characteristics of the field and management principles[END_REF]. • Conflicts then surfaced that led to a questioning of the work carried out up to then; the marketing process was thus modified late.

• This led to neglect of the real test phases with one or more dealers to evaluate the procedure's effectiveness, so it was not possible to count on the knowledge accumulated during these tests [START_REF] Thomke | R&D comes to service. Bank of America's pathbreaking experiment[END_REF], and marketing became the sole test of truth. • Likewise, the network could not be trained satisfactorily and no incentives systems has been implemented. Finally, the marketing efforts, which are crucial to the success of an innovative goods (cf. Section 2) or service [START_REF] Lovelock | Developing and implementing new services[END_REF], could not be carried out effectively. This undoubtedly constitutes an initial explanation for the low number of subscriptions observed.

Nevertheless, while the functioning of the design process explains the difficult start-up of the services, this alone cannot explain the change in the performance of the two over time.

The role of the monitoring and launch structures

This leads to a study of the way in which the launch itself was organized, which constitutes the second variable underlying the differences in performance observed between firms in the case of products (cf. Section 2). On this question, realtime monitoring of the marketing process enabled us to uncover the differences between the technical and commercial dimensions of the service. We believe that this will explain the absence of front-office learning with regard to marketing the service.

In the case of emergency calls, the communications infrastructure is managed by a technical team for whom this is the main mission and who themselves designed and established the infrastructure; the team thus has significant experience with possible defects in the system. Every defective call is systematically analyzed in order to understand the source of the problem. The change in the reliability rate between the fourth month and the eighth reflects the difficulty as well as the effectiveness of learning. Thereafter, the team was able to rapidly detect and solve the various problems encountered; this can be seen in the curve in Figure 1. Yet we still find ourselves in a situation much like that studied in the literature on products: a team is managing a largely automated system. The challenge is thus to understand the dysfunctions of the system, but the latter is familiar as the design work has laid a basis for understanding.

The situation is different with regard to the commercial dimension of the service. The difficulty here is managing the way a very heterogeneous network scattered throughout the country learns6 . The challenge here is 1) to monitor the functioning of the entire network, and 2) to ensure that both learning and the exchange of learning amongst dealerships are capitalized upon. The system for managing the ramp-up will thus play an absolutely crucial role in this process. Given the geographic dispersal of the dealers and the sales pressure they are subjected to, it is not at all likely that the transfer of knowledge will take place spontaneously.

However, in the case of the emergency call service, it is clear that the monitoring and launch structures are weak. Unlike the telecommunication infrastructure there isn't any launch team. Furthermore, due to the unfolding of the design process, the involvement of the sales department remains limited. Consequently dealers do not have a contact capable of answering their questions in case of problems. The existence of a launch support structure is thus in our opinion a sine qua non for the existence of a learning process7 . Its role will consist of centralizing the learning acquired by the different dealers and, based on the accumulated knowledge, make changes to procedures and assist the network with any difficulties.

Other case studies in the same company show the effectiveness of this type of structure, when it exists. Its absence in the E/B Call case goes a long way toward explaining the stability of the curves. It has been amplified by the lack of incentives for dealers. Moreover, a look at the changes in the curves leads us to believe that the effects of this absence are cumulative over time in the case of services. There is thus every chance that the innovation will never make up for the accumulated lag.

Designing the sales process for innovation

The E/B Call case shows both the importance of the sales process in launching the service and the difficulty of involving the sales personnel in the design process. For the designers, the problem here is to design a sales process that will help both distributors AND customers to learn about the innovation more rapidly. This question has, however, not been given much attention. This clearly goes beyond the field of the literature on ramp-up. The paradox is that it is also given little attention in studies on marketing and sales: the former basically emphasizes the role of tests that can facilitate the take-up of a new product by customers [START_REF] Manceau | Lancement de nouveaux produits[END_REF], while the latter, to our knowledge, does not deal with the links between sales and innovation8 . Yet our research at Telcar demonstrates the impact of this variable and the complexity of this task: it requires consideration of customer dynamics and support material, adaptation of tools used by salespeople, and training methods for salespeople and the incentives used to mobilize them.

The E/B Call case shows the importance of involving the sales personnel in design: they are the ones who know the sales process and are capable of anticipating any problems in implementation. The case of the emergency call service illustrates the consequences of involving these people too late. In this respect, it is striking to see the similarity between the weak involvement of sales and the situation of factories in the mid-1980s: process feasibility problems were discovered late because manufacturers were not very mobilized in the design process for new products. With the implementation of the concurrent engineering approach in the 1990s, the factories were mobilized upstream of development right up to the most operational level to review product/process designs. This was to play a central role in the shortening of product cycles and the increase in the speed of ramp-up observed in the early 1990s [START_REF] Clark | Product development performance. Strategy, organization and management in the world auto industry[END_REF]. The growing importance of services to manufacturing strategies and the latter's impact on marketing have made it important to bring about an analogous change in the sales world.

The limits on the parallel between the two worlds probably stems from the nature of the sales activity itself. In his research on automobile sales platforms, J. Y. [START_REF] Barbier | Efficacité et transposabilité d'une plate-forme de vente[END_REF] shows that the activities of salespeople lead them to concentrate on the most profitable activities and limit the window during which they are available for learning new sales procedures. This "cognitive saturation" of the sales personnel is a constraint for those who design and test sales processes. It is magnified in the present case by the innovative, free nature of the service. Up till now, therefore, salespeople have not viewed E/B Call as a concept that really differentiates them; this partly explains the difficulty of mobilizing them and is particularly reflected in their absence during pre-marketing tests. The company is thus losing an opportunity to have them review the processes developed. This emphasizes the importance of:

1. The thoroughness of the test conducted, which does not merely concern the technical dimensions of the service, as is frequently the case [START_REF] Eiglier | Servuction. Le marketing des services[END_REF][START_REF] Gallouj | L'innovation dans les services[END_REF]. 2. Front-loading in design: this case shows the need to start in very early on training and "evangelization" within of the network9 . This doubtlessly represents a challenge for the "sales methods" that need to be integrated into the design process so as to make the sales process a crucial lever in the adoption of the innovation.

CONCLUSION

The E/B Call case study has helped to demonstrate the specific features of a service launch. This involves simultaneously managing two processes that are relatively separate in the case of products: the ramp-up of the production system and marketing. Nevertheless, this specificity does not render irrelevant the results presented in the literature on ramp-up. We find, for instance:

• The difficulty of managing the launch of a highly innovative service: the absence of precedents and the need to develop new technical and sales knowledge considerably complicates the design process. • The importance of the quality of the upstream design work for performance and, conversely, the negative impact of late changes: this emphasizes the practical and theoretical importance of developing methods to manage innovation that are suited to services [START_REF] Lenfle | Innovation in services : the contribution of design theory[END_REF]). • The role of management structures in this phase: first, they help to manage the problems that inevitably appear; and, second, they help to capitalize on the knowledge accumulated so as to guide the process in real time.

Our research has also identified key issues for research into innovation, two important points in particular:

First, the design of the sales process and its impact on the adoption of innovations is a field that has been little explored by the literature. Yet the case studied here illustrates the difficulties experienced in involving these personnel. The methods used to involve them undoubtedly constitute an emerging field of research. This brings up both the role and the form of the tests conducted during the design process, which must make it possible to test this dimension, and of the incentive systems for personnel who are systematically swamped in their day-to-day tasks. Studying the ways salespeople learn and opportunities for influencing this is also an important issue that we have barely touched upon here.

In addition to tests conducted at pilot sites, the issue of rolling out a large-scale service is another important question for researchers and practitioners. The dispersed, heterogeneous nature of the network makes it difficult to transpose the procedures developed upstream intact. This relates to the work of the designers and the organization of the launch. The challenge will be to design procedures that are both general enough to ensure that service delivery is consistent as well as adaptable to the contexts in which they are delivered to the customer.

The questions raised, in particular concerning the design of the sales process, call for innovative collaboration between the disciplines involved (marketing, sales, new product development and innovation management).

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: A simplified blueprint of the E /B Call.

Figure

  Figure 2: The emergency call service: 17 months of operation

A bibliographical search on the Internet reveals that this issue has not been covered by any article in the specialist journals on production management (Production & Operations Management Journal), nor in journals dealing more specifically with services (Journal of Service Research, International Journal of Service Industry Management).

Generally, production begins before marketing, if only to supply the network.

Unlike manufacturing plants that can "take back" a product before marketing it, even if this is costly.

For reasons of confidentiality, names and dates have been changed and/or disguised.

These are not all equally serious. Errors in registration hurt the company first, as it will experience difficulties in managing its customer relations. On the other hand, failure to locate the vehicle calls into question the very reason for the service.

Some dealers are medium-sized companies in large urban areas, while others are very small familyrun firms, and so forth.

This has been shown in the case of products (cf. section 2) The difference is that here the transfer must be managed in real time, whereas the product studies generally examine the consequences of the transfer in the case of two successive launches in different factories.

A study of the articles appearing in the last 10 years in the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management shows that the question of innovation is virtually absent from sales studies.

Other cases observed in the same company show that, in the case of services, training efforts are particularly long-lasting and costly (many people mobilized for six months).


Régine Teulier
email: teulier@shs.polytechnique.fr

Evolving routines and strategic change. Learning in practice through knowledge and knowing in evolving routines

Keywords: Knowledge engineering, micro-practices, routines, and characterization

Change is « the normal condition of organizational life », and routines and micro-practices are a source of continuous change. Routines can be analysed as an emergent source of change, but they also can be seen as constraint and emergent at the same time. The continuous evolution of routines and the continuous organizational by the evolving routines can be seen as a double process, change by constraint driving (for example strategy driving) or emergent that is to say day-to-day driving. In both cases, the new routines are obtained very often from the old ones. And very often, the two processes occur simultaneously. Thus, routines evolve through a double process, one of events solicitation, prescribed incitation to change or incitation perceived by the actors. We suggest taking as a metaphor the adaptation process of Piaget, composed of assimilation and accommodation to illustrate this double process. In that routines evolution, the interconnected evolution of knowledge and knowing is a key factor; we propose to use knowledge engineering methods to describe it.

Introduction

Change is « the normal condition of organizational life » (Tsoukas, Chia, 2002). To observe and analyse this continuous change of the organization is quite difficult, one promising way is to have interest for routines [START_REF] Feldman | Organizational routines as a source of continuous change[END_REF] and micro-practices [START_REF] Rouleau | Micro-practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: how middle managers interpret ands sell change every day[END_REF], [START_REF] Jarzabkowski | Strategic Practices: an activity theory perspective on continuity and change[END_REF].

The « micro level » [START_REF] Feldman | Resources in emerging structures and processes of change[END_REF] shows interest for processes which are not concerned by the whole organization, but that can be observed about a small part of its activity and some of the actors, in their day-to-day activity. This approach allows a synthesis view between « organizing » perspectives and « practice-based »ones. It uses the notions of routine and procedure that became well known in management science, for example, linked to the core competencies of the firm [START_REF] Hamel | Competing for the future[END_REF]. They are consistent with some theoretical foundations in economy through the evolutionary theory of economic change (Nelson et Winter, 1982).

We propose to use Feldman definitions (2000): « Routines are temporal structures that are often used as a way of accomplishing organizational work. » or more precisely « repeated patterns of behaviour that are bound by rules and customs and that do not change very much from one iteration to another » or (Feldman, 1995, p 6) « repeated actions carried out by two or more interdependent actors ». Thus, routines are defined as repeated procedures among the procedures that are the « standard operating procedures » allowing doing a task in the meaning of Cyert and March (1963).

The distinction between routines and procedures is then essentially due for Feldman to this feature of repeated action. Routines are that particular procedure: those, which are, repeated ones. That implies several consequences: there are the procedures which are applied without thinking to it, those which are call into question only border line and when problems occur, those which concretise the « path dependency »of the firm (Nelson et Winter, 1982). Evolutions and adaptations are nevertheless frequent as Feldman shows it, we shall discuss that point.

Routines can also be considered as the way the actors translate the procedure into activity, they put into acts what is organizationally planned to do. Procedures are explicit, of-ten encoded and written, well known of the hierarchy. Thus, routines should be instantiations of procedures, they should be more « variables » than the procedures that may differ progressively from routines and micro-practices. However that distinction seems not stabilised among these different works and we have to notice that the two concepts are indifferently used.

More clearly, micro-practices are referring directly to the notions of routines and procedures in the frame of activity of the actors. For some authors, as Feldman they seems equivalent to routines and if the term of practice is used, even at a « micro » level, the particular qualification of micro-practices is not used.

For other authors [START_REF] Rouleau | Micro-practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: how middle managers interpret ands sell change every day[END_REF], the term of micro-practices is used in a particular meaning. [START_REF] Rouleau | Micro-practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: how middle managers interpret ands sell change every day[END_REF] situates the micro-practices at the individual level: « All individuals put micro-practices of translation into action every day… », routines at the organizational level and conversations at the social level [START_REF] Rouleau | Micro-practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: how middle managers interpret ands sell change every day[END_REF](Rouleau, , p. 1425)). The routines that are an organizational feature are lived every day by people in a personal way, and that produce micro-practices. [(22], p. 1431: « It appears that middle managers, through their tacit knowledge, strategize by enacting a set of micro-practices that are produced in each routine and conversation surrounding the change. » or by the same author [START_REF] Rouleau | Micro-practices of strategic sensemaking and sensegiving: how middle managers interpret ands sell change every day[END_REF](Rouleau, , p. 1432): «all the routines and conversations examined combined synergistically the four micro-practices into arrangements of verbal and symbolic signs». This author refers particularly to Giddens [START_REF] Giddens | The constitution of society[END_REF]: «In other words, these micro-practices were produced through routines and conversations as the result of mundane human competence in action » [START_REF] Jarzabkowski | Strategic Practices: an activity theory perspective on continuity and change[END_REF] use also the concept of micro-practices. This author defines practices referring to activity theory (Vygotski, 1997) and the concrete activity context as an activity system (Engestrom, 1993). This view is consistent with that one that proposes to consider the organization as a set of activity systems [START_REF] Blackler | Knowledge and the theory of organization : organizations as activity systems and the reframing of management[END_REF]. In that perspective, this author considers that practices are mainly a link between actors, according the social and historic dimension of Vygotski. In that view, micro-practices are the way the actors « habit » organizational routines and made them evolve.

The greatest interest of considering routines is to allow linking organizing, practices and learning. The point is to enlighten precisely how the firm orientations are putting in day-to-day acts and « how people are invested in the doing the real world», as [START_REF] Cook | Bridging epistemologies : the generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing[END_REF] invited us to observe. Doing so, the analyst focuses on an organizational processes granularity level, which include day-to-day actors' practices [START_REF] Charlet | Teulier L'ingénierie des connaissances[END_REF]. The routines granularity can be high: so that they include the description of several actors' activity during several months.

But they can also be constituted of actors' activity during some minutes. Thus, the routines granularity is highly variable. Routines including routines, «Within each of these routines there are multiples routines, and there is some variance in what is included in each of routines depending on who is describing them. » [START_REF] Feldman | Organizational routines as a source of continuous change[END_REF], several granularity levels can be implied in the same case.

Routines as well as practices are, at the same time, products of deliberated organizational activity and emergent processes, created by actors during their day-to-day work situations Feldman (1995, p. 613). Micro-practices evolving processes are also learning processes. They change as soon as they exist, in a day-to-day evolution, because situations differed every day [START_REF] Feldman | Organizational routines as a source of continuous change[END_REF] and that actors have to adapt their behaviour continuously to do with these renewed situations. Actors simultaneously perceive changes in the world they live and modify their practices. Organizational decisions impulse also changes. Thus a double movement exist, that can be mainly emergent (bottom-up) or mainly a hierarchical change process (top-down). A double movement has been theorised as a learning process by Piaget.

We shall use in this paper the frame of that theory, only as a metaphor, because it is no evident to apply a theory about human intelligence to organizational learning. Piaget has showed that the permanent interaction between individual and the world permit to construct knowledge through a learning process called adaptation. This process is composed of a double process. assimilation and accommodation are the two complementary processes of adaptation, through which awareness of the outside world is internalised. Although one may predominate at any one moment, they are inseparable and exist in a dialectical relationship. In assimilation, what is perceived in the outside world is incorporated into the internal world, without changing the structure of that internal world, the pre-existent mental categories, those in use are maintained. In accommodation, the internal world has to accommodate itself to the evidence with which it is confronted and thus adapted to it; the organism has to change the schemas in use to fit the realities of external objects. Both are going on at the same time. Most of the time we are assimilating familiar material in the world around us, nevertheless, our minds have also to adjust to accommodate it. Both processes constitute the equilibration, which is the central concept of learning for Piaget. Tsoukas and Chia use the term "accommodate" in the same meaning but without referring to Piaget.

We have to pay attention to knowledge as a resource for routines when we are focusing on routines and learning processes. Knowledge engineering methods are useful to describe knowledge. Knowledge engineering does not focus on routines, but the notion of task may be compared to that one of routine. Knowledge engineering aims are to build concepts, tools and methods to model knowledge and develop software using knowledge and supporting user' work [START_REF] Charlet | Teulier L'ingénierie des connaissances[END_REF]. Most of the time, the starting point is a synthetic activity description that is preliminary step for modelling. KADS methodology concentrates a lot of works and debates in knowledge engineering in Europe during the ninety. This methodology is based on problem solving methods [START_REF] Newell | Human problem solving[END_REF]. It argues that it is built and not existing before modelling, and that models have to be constructed to be guidelines to the knowledge acquisition process.

It argues that problem solving methods are various but not infinite and that we can recognize in very various using fields some generic problem solving methods that can be modelled and re-used in these different fields. Therefore, the aim of methodology is to build library of models.

The set of routines studied by Feldman may be compared with two levels of the general model of the task in Kads (Fig. 1), but these descriptions of routines are not organised through models well identified and separated. This description by a discourse organised with concepts may be compared to the Kads models of organization, of the task, of the agent, of knowledge and of organization.

FIG. 1 -Situation of organisation model and task model in KADS methodology

The task model is composed in several views. Schreiber et al define it as following (Schreiber et al, 2000, p 45): « the notion of task, although important, has different connotations. As a commonsense concept, it is a human activity to achieve some purpose. In the above organizational study it has been viewed in the (not incompatible) sense of a well-defined subpart of a business process. The notion of task has also emerged as a crucial one in the theory and methodology of knowledge systems and of knowledge sharing and reuse. » Schreiber et al define the task so that it may make sense in the two fields (Fig. 2), in the one of modelling actors and in the one of practitioners. To do that, they define the task as a subpart of a business model presenting the following characteristics: it represents a goal-oriented activity adding value to the organization, it handles inputs and delivers desired outputs in a structured and controlled way, it consumes resources it requires and provides knowledge and competences, it is carried out according to given quality and performance criteria, it is performed by responsible and accountable agents.

FIG. 2 -The generic task model in KADS methodology

Observation of routines

To pay attention to practices, to identify and to give a title to the tasks or to the routines is an important starting point? It needs to distinguish among different actors' practices and among different knowledge. It's a first step which « distinguishes » an activity frame from a complicated organizational background, full of activity, alternate exchanges that implies several set of actors which are not all concerned with the studied routine. It. constitutes for itself a step of analysis and design, which need observations, methods and interpretation. This step is common to an identification of routines and to the modelling of problem solving methods as it is done in knowledge engineering. We propose to call that step characterisation; we shall discuss that point further.

We shall study the routines evolution in the work practices of a scientific journal editing board. We shall do this description with several composites: in terms of routines, in terms of characterisation, then by adding some modelling elements to pay attention to knowledge.

Goal and value

Time and control

Knowledge and competencies

Ressources

Methods

Describing routines in the practice of management of a students residence halls: budgeting for maintenance, hiring, training the student staff, moving students at the beginning of the year and closing the residence halls, Feldman use for identifying routines the formulation proposed by the concerned actors. (Feldman, 2000, p. 614) « Organizational members identified five routines for me ». That way of routines identification is close to the actors sense making, it is consistent with the ethnomethodologic approach which found this author method (among four meta-theories) (Feldman 1995, p.4) « Ethnomethodologists look for processes by which people make sense of their interactions and the institutions through which they live ». We will not discuss that theoretical point in this paper.

Routines description is done through a short story about actors' activity and some characteristics as incomes, outcomes, and used resources. By the routine process, actors transform incomes in outcomes. Among different resources for the routine: actors, activities, knowledge, knowing and others routines. We propose here, to extend this approach by discussing the qualification of knowledge. In fact, knowledge seems to us a main resource that can be extended by artefacts, that can permit to determine routines types, and that permit to link routines and competencies.

Data gathering

We have observed the editorial board during two years, about twenty day meetings, and forty individuals interviews of two hours.

Data analysing

Organizational setting

This scientific journal is a french language journal, it is publishing papers of a various and distributed scientific community, and animate that community. The main processes that we have distinguished in the editing board practices and that we suggest, as routines are the following:

1. Selecting scientific papers by peers review process 2. Management of a texts set

Issue composition

These three processes are massively overlapped and interacting together. The main process is the Peer review process" as, described by [START_REF] Rowland | The peer review process[END_REF] according a lot of authors "…the four main functions of the scholarly literature are dissemination of current knowledge, archiving of the canonical knowledge base, quality control of published information and assignment of priority and credit for authors."

Each of these three main activities is made of a set of plus or less coordinated and wellarranged processes. We shall describe four routines, included in the first and the third global routine, propose a characterisation and study how these routines are changing.

Description of routines

In the peer review process routine, we focus on two evolving routines: the routine Henry, assignment of a rapporteur and the routine Kathy: special instructions to reviewers.

In the global routine issue composition, we focus on two evolving routines: the summary composition and the evolution of book reviews.

The peer review routine.

In the peer review process, we can distinguish the following routines in the editing board practices that we have observed:

• Assign a rapporteur

• Assign three reviewers

• Received review notes, evaluate them, synthesize them, prepare the collective decision by a synthesized rapporteur note • Made an editing board decision about the paper

• Change notifications to author

• Evaluate the Vn+1 / Vn evolution and the remarks integration or not, in a short loop managed by the rapporteur or in a long loop with back review by one or two reviewers.

To characterize rapidly this process with few words, we can say that it is an activity of selecting papers for publishing. The process goes on several steps: a rapporteur manage the individual paper curs us, several reviewers are selected among a population and an assignment paper/reviewers is done. Reviewer's notifications are collectively validated and legitimated by the editing board. The peer review process is a core activity in scientific activity. Beyond the notion of selection, it's a complex way to influence scientific production and partly a co-construction of results, because the notifications addressed to the authors largely contribute to the direct elaboration of the paper.

We shall represent the process of reviewer's assignment in terms of tasks. At the beginning of this process, the assignment of a rapporteur. The process of reviewer's assignment to a paper is the task of assignment in the Kads library. It consists in pairing two objects belonging at two different sets. The goal of the task is to create the relation between a paper and three reviewers. Two main notions of that model are the notion of resource and the notion of assignment. The resource of the task is a set of reviewers, they are a resource fro the editing board. The assignment process allocates three reviewers to a paper.

Inputs are the set of papers presented by the editor in chief, the set of possible reviewers as known by the editing board, the sub-set of reviewers proposed by the rapporteur. Outputs are the set of pairs reviewers / paper. The figure 3 is quoted from the generic schema proposed by Schreiber and al for the task of assignment (2000, p 158).

FIG. 3 -Modelling the reviewer's assignment to a paper.

Among a set of papers, a sub-set is determined that can be assigned to reviewers. It is affected to the papers set being allocated; a paper is extracted from this set. Then a resource constituted of a sub-set of three reviewers is allocated to this paper.

In order to produce a synthetic representation, at the same time in terms of task and in terms of routine, we propose the following schema. That schema represents incomes, outcomes and processes, at a higher granularity than in a task model. Evolving routine Henry Assignment of a rapporteur.

The routine assignment of a rapporteur, first step of the papers' selection has evolved during our observation period with the opportunity of a particular situation: several papers were received the day before the editorial board meeting. The board secretary was on vacation. To gain time, two editors in chief propose to assign a rapporteur without an editor reading note, represented on figure 4, that means delete the first step and the resource "paper" is directly used par the process editorial board meeting. When the new routine was used, it was applied on 2/3 papers, the others needing a detailed analysis and presentation to be allocated. The new routine was maintained and used in the same way: only for a part of the set of papers, and only when time was missing.

The competition between scientific journals, the evolving publishing medium and the financial challenge to maintained a journal lead to strategic pressure on the editorial board to shorten the cycle submission -publishing. That pressure forced itself upon the editorial board members, but they don't mentioned it. With this pressure background an opportunity came: the reception of a lot of papers during the secretary vacations.

The assimilation of the dictate « shorten the cycle» and the accommodation of the routine assign of a rapporteur, produce the adaptation of the editorial board and the change of the organizational routine. The external events are the pressure and the opportunity. The redactors' knowing permit the routine to evolve.

Considering the collective task, one may think that two main processes of knowing occur together: the classification among typicality of the paper, and the fit of assignment.

When the collective task develops without redactor-in-chief presentation, these two knowing processes have to develop with fuzzy resources. The task is no more to validate or to modify the editor-in-chief proposal, all participants have to do their best to have a point of the view on the type of the paper, and to propose reviewers names without any helping external artefact. There is no more the medium of an individual analysis. The group, then is reduced to evaluating from elements coming from the author: title, abstract, key words and to a quick visual glance through the paper that the editor-in-chief do directly during the meeting: structure of the paper, some remarks (« there are a lot of sche-mas or maps about ….), some bibliographical references for enlightening title and key words. Thus, considering collective activity, we could say the structure itself of the preexisting task is modified, so that the changing process is accommodation.

Considering the organizational process, without decomposing the collective task; one can consider that only a step is delete. And that the process is only a kind of assimilation because the routine is shorter but not really new.

Evolving routine Kathy: special instruction to reviewers

The routine consisting in special instructions to authors was proposed by a redactor named Kathy. She proposes to have a special demand for the reviewers for a special she was involved in. Kathy was rapporteur of a paper, she can't imagine to accept the paper as it was presently: the paper was too limited, too describing a case and without detachment and referring similar works. But the paper was an interesting one by the deep and intelligent analysis of a case. The task of Kathy, as rapporteur was: to reject the paper or to propose reviewers' name to editorial board. In that situation, she proposed to the editing board to demand, exceptionally to the reviewers, to read the paper, thinking to a broadening of perspective and to ask in their reviews to broaden the approach and to refer to similar works. That orientation of review was judged unacceptable by the whole editing board. The debate was active; Kathy was opposite to the rest of editing board. What was in discussion was the respective role of rapporteur and reviewer. Kathy does not understand why, as rapporteur she can't give to reviewers, a simple idea of broadening, let them do what they wish with it. In her mind, that was a simply and limited modification of the collaboration between rapporteur and rewievers. For her, it was as saying: I have read this paper as rapporteur, I think that it presents a lack of opening view and ask you to be careful to that point in reading it, and if you agree, to make suggestion to the author in that sense. For the editing board, there was no doubt that, from a deontological point of view, it was impossible to give any particular instruction for a paper review. The instruction to reviewers may be only from a general point of view (of scientific analysis) and from orientation of the journal (scope, kind of methods, of data presentation and so on)

Evolving routine: issue composition

The process of issue composition is a process of classification and selecting papers, from a set of papers, The aim of attributing a paper to an issue is build on several months. So that the building of summary issue is not starting from a white page. It is an iterative process lying on six months and which entered in a finalised step, a month before publishing.

Characterising this issue composition activity: the aim of the activity is to compose a document including several texts, the juxtaposition of these texts is corresponding on one hand to a formal and stable structure that determine a sequenced texts following their nature and on the other hand to a logic of content of dossier that is evolving for each issue.

That composition is an iterative process on several months.

The issue composition process, in terms of tasks, and following the library of the Kads method KADS is a task of planning (Schreiber et al, 2000, p 159). The goal is to generate an arranged texts list. The main concepts are the list as goal, the actions of generate and the list as starting object. The inputs are the issue definition, a summary type, and the candidate papers. The output is the constituted summary. The characteristics of the task are to actions or entities, the qualification of « planning » as a general meaning. Figure 5 is designed, following the generic schema of planning in Kads method (Schreiber et al, 2000, p 160) and describe this issue composition process.

FIG. 5 -Modelling the summary issue journal design

Two kinds of requirements exist: hard requirements or constraints and soft requirements or preferences. The constraints are the text nature: editorial or book review or scientific paper. The preferences are more flexible, they are fixed by the editorial board, for example the theme of the papers will be various, so that different subscribers will find an interest in the issue, or in the contrary several papers on a similar theme will give several enlightening of a theme. The difficulty is from adding all the constraints which have effects partially contradictory, for example with that editorial relating that scientific event, it will be interesting to select that paper A, but it is in concurrence with the paper B that have been accepted before.

The proposed evolution by several members of the editing board was to accept to change the arrangement of the headings in the summary, following the demand of a guest ponder the selecting process. The hard requirements that specify the generic summary with sequenced headings is not took up by the editing board.

Evolving routine: column Book reviews

The column Book review design had some problem several months ago; the column perspective is in question. Books received from publishers are increasingly higher. The editing board is evolving in its waiting, it does not exactly what kind of book comments it is waiting for, thus several time, the comments it received was disappointing. Several points of view were examined from the "objective» abstracts of books received form the publishers, to an academic evaluation and debate of some chosen books. To whom ask the summary or position analysis? To volunteers? To editing board? To reviewers set? For which books? Those received from publishers? Those selected by the editing board because they are important for the community? Those for which somebody proposes a review? The subscribers and mainly the contributors seem to be interested not by abstracts but by notes "a point of view on…» At the end, the editing board decided that the heading « Book review » would become « Book in debate ».

Six months later, most of ambiguities around this heading are still there. And, the delays of publishing the books reports are too long, to still interest subscribers. The heading evolves one more time. Books evaluate as main ones by the editing board will be attribute to reviewers and the book review will be publish in the printed journal, with a global aim to do faster. Books received from publishers, will be let proposed during the editing board, if a volunteer ask the book, it will be entrust the volunteer with the task of review it, and that if the review come back (without management of the editing board), it will be publish on the website.

The editing board knowledge that can be considered as an assimilation of context elements are that to maintain a scientific journal alive and to animate a community life with it, it is necessary to inform that community of events that are pertinent for it. That has to be done in a shorter and shorter delay. And to inform is no more sufficient, information has to be insert in debate, the journal have to propose interpretations. . The first change of routine is done by accommodation, the routine change because the instructions to book reviewer change, the outcome change: the written note is not of same kind than previously, and editors in chief do not evaluate it in the same way.

Six months later, the second accommodation consists in making two kinds of book reviews and to have a routine for each kind of book.

Discussion

We shall not discuss here the learning theory of Piaget, particularly of the under estimation of the social relations and language role that Vygostky himself pointed out. As we said it before, we used the Piaget theory as a metaphor.

New routines are built from the old ones

The point we try to enlighten and that we shall discuss here, is just a point about evolution in terms of complex process with double loop and not in terms of pure emergence. . Speaking of assimilation, we tend to think an information transfer and we may think that it concerns knowledge and not knowing. But it is the difficulty of formulates knowing, which may leads to this interpretation. A competence of the editing board is to understand and to interpret the professional evolution; it is also a kind of knowing. That seems to be acceptable for a delay submit / publish, three years ago is not actually. But this reason is not clearly formulate by the editing board. It seems to be evidence that we have to do that.

In fact, there is a confuse situation perception and a confuse situation evaluation, that leads to change routine. Thus we cannot consider that assimilation would concern knowledge and that accommodation would concern knowing. The two processes assimilation and accommodation concern at the same time knowledge and knowing. Both are of different kind and evolving their own way, but interacting [START_REF] Cook | Bridging epistemologies : the generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing[END_REF].

Micro-practices leads actors to propose candidates routines

Micro-practices are a way to make routines and professional know-how evolve, they are also a resource for routines. Micro-practices interact with routines and permit us to analyse « a generative dance » between individual and collective practices. The notions of professional genre and of personal style proposed by Clot, using Vygostki concepts and theory, describe the same process of social activity formation, combining written rules and not written rules. Following Clot when an actor masters the professional genre, he begins to develop a personal style. The personal style makes the professional gender evolve. Reciprocally an actor may develop the personal style only he masters the genre.

Both are maintained and evolve through collectives conversations about gender, which permit at the same time its transmission and its evolution by an individual and collective reflexive work, about how to act day-to-day the gender.

Thus, the proposal of Kathy to made the routine « particular instructions to the reviewers » evolve, may be seen as a personal way to do that is proposed to made the collective way evolve. Kathy proposes her own style but she did not succeeded to make the professional genre evolve. To made the professional genre evolve, it is necessary to convince the others members of the group. Actors propose candidate routines, which represent their personal practice to become an organizational routine; but to succeed in that transformation, they have to be shared. Thus, by this process micro-practices, as individuals' process made routines, as organizational process evolve.

The characterisation

We think that the process of characterisation is an essential step for organizational learning and for knowledge engineering. It seems to be a junction point between the two approaches. In the process of characterisation, the analyst chooses immediately a level of analysis, without apparent difficulty, as if the granularity imposes itself, that is that Goffman (1991) calls « that occurs here and now », that may correspond to the notion of « base level » used by Rosch. Actors know to call a routine, but they do not know to characterize activity.

The characterisation of processes and of knowledge consists in describing them in generic terms, without using a formalized method. Thus, this characterisation is a synthetic formulation, in day-to-day language, describing with the professional notions. The characterisation is situated to the « knowledge level ». To characterize the activity that we wish to observe or to model, is to pick it up from the other activities, to distinguish it, that the actors does not need to do.

It is also a way of making categories among observed organizational processes. That allows making the hypothesis that these processes are belonging to process types or to process type families. Following that way, we can make a second hypothesis: if these types exist, they can be found in various organisations and professional activities. We are referring, here, to the categorisation theory (Rosch, 1978) and to the notion of models library in the problem solving methods (Wielinga, 1992). Characterisation is thus a kind of descriptive vignette attribute to the observed activity, a sort of « type » of practice.

Characterisation is a preliminary step to the steps, which are producing detailed and formalized descriptions; the matter is just to know of what we are speaking of. That do appears immediately in the dialogue with actors or through practices observations. Characterisation implies interpretation and commitment of the observer, and it represents a possible orientation for the later development of work.

The knowledge engineering methods focus on further steps, more formal and more analytic ones and which distinguish knowledge, tasks, and communications. But some authors mention that step [START_REF] Schreiber | Knowledge Engineering and Management[END_REF], [START_REF] Aussenac-Gilles | Méthodes ascendantes pour l'ingénierie des connaissances[END_REF]. And the notion of characterisation is used in fact. Thus in (Schreiber et al, 2000, p. 129) the concept is used and appears as a title to speak of the action, done on a task, nevertheless, the term of characterisation does not appear in the bright index of the book. Schreiber and al consider three steps in the knowledge modelization process (Schreiber et al, 2000, p. 169): the step of identification which consists in a familiarisation and a first task models inventory, the step of specification which complete the set of knowledge and inferences concerned by the software, the step of refinement which consists in detailing the used models for the development, and to pair them off with use scenarios and to begin simulations. For us, the step of characterisation belongs to the first step.

The characterisation of processes may be applied at different levels, first of all at the global level of organizational activity, then at different included processes. Until the characterisation of cognitive processes then it joints the tasks and inferences models library of KADS.

Cognitivism and practice-based

The two ways of describing knowledge, learning and organizational processes, through organization science methods and knowledge engineering methods may be complementary, there may join in the step of characterization. In organization science, a certain discourse variation is permitted in describing practices. In knowledge engineering a unique description is researched, because it is thought as avoiding misunderstandings that is necessary to develop software.

We have only used the European knowledge engineering stream that differs the US one [START_REF] Menzies | Evaluating Knowledge engineering techniques[END_REF] and which are founded on problem solving method (Wielinga, 1992). Our point of view does not include all the knowledge engineering methods.

One may see a certain contradictory to use methods founded on a cognitivist perspective and others founded on a practice-based perspective. But the use of these methods are complementary, as we have shown it in this paper and as others authors like [START_REF] Carlile | A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries : boundary objects in new product developpement[END_REF] have already done. It can be done, being careful of not detached abstractions from a deep practices analysis: « Abstractions detached from practice distort or obscure intricacies of that practice » (Brown and Duguid, 1991)

Conclusion

We have shown that new routines are built from the old ones, that actors accommodate there gradually to new events and integrate there in their practices. We have shown that knowledge and knowing are resources for routines, and that the actors' micro-practices lead them to propose candidate routines that succeeded or failed.

To do that sort of analysis and to describe the new structure and the old one of the evolving routine, a task modelling is useful. It is interesting to do this task representation using PSM to enlighten knowledge and knowing. In this approach of representing tasks and routines, we distinguish a common step that we call characterisation. Thus, we are showing that some cognitivism methods may be used in a global and practice-based analysis.

  guest editor asked to keep the same headings but to change their arrangement, to follow logic of content of the special issue and not the logic of the journal structure. In terms of representation of task, on the Fig 5, the discussed constraint was that one which

  Organizing the peer review process, as a routine and as set of tasks.

	Selecting candidates Three reviewers Rapporteur Paper Analysis Analyse FIG 4 -Analyse Review note and Reviewers proposal Analysis And reviewer proposal Editor in chief Paper Editor in chief + editorial board Rapporteur + editorial board Paper Actors Incomes Process individual	Review note Candidates reviewers Assign Assign Review note and Reviewers proposal Review note and proposal Outcome Income	reviewer Assign a rapporteur Assign Process collective	1 rapporteur Three reviewers Assigned to one paper Outcome
		Paper	Assign	Three reviewers Linked to paper
	Rapporteur + editorial board	Paper	Synthesize	Synthesis and Decision proposal	Selecting paper	changes Yes / No
			Reviewers notes
			Deleted step in the new routine

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the T-CAN (Knowledge treatments, learning and new technologies) program of CNRS and was a part of the project ACTMUT: Access to the Texts and Mutation of Techniques.

Knowledge are knowing resources for routines

It is not easy to distinguish knowledge and knowing, but it is interesting to try it, because n their interaction lies a source of learning [START_REF] Cook | Bridging epistemologies : the generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing[END_REF]. In the case study of editing board what are they using as knowledge, for example in the routine « selecting papers »? First if all, knowledge of scientific domain and of the whole set of works and publications. Together a set of authors linked to the set of publications with a lot of knowledge about authors (works in succession for each author, membership of a stream of thinking, used methods, and so on). At the end operating knowledge about routines, here about the rapporteur role (respective role of the rapporteur and of redactor-inchief regarding the authors), evaluating the knowledge that the candidates rapporteurs may have of the various set of reviewers. That leads to built a list of candidates rapporteurs, more restricted, more specific and more operating than the list of a set authorspublications). These different knowledge are resources for the assignment knowing, and both are resources for the routine.

To illustrate the difference between knowledge and knowing, knowledge can be partly explicit and represented in software. To illustrate that point, in relation with routine « to assign a reviewer », we can quote the design if a tool (Bourigault) which is studied for the editing board that we have studied. This tool generates automatically a concepts set from the texts corpus of an author. A sub-set of these main concepts set permit to obtain a reviewer « profile ». The concepts are not proposed by the authors or by the redaction, or by the website, but generate automatically from the full-texts. When a new paper arrives, a set of concepts is generated and « describe » that paper, it is compared to the reviewers PROFIL, and a list of candidate reviewers is deduced. Thus the knowledge of a set of authors / texts, we had evoked before is partly represented in software, and is support and resource for the knowing of reviewer assignment that consist to choose among the names proposed by the list or out of this list.

The knowing in this routine consist in choosing the type of the paper, in the selection of candidates reviewers and mainly the « fit » that permit the pairing off the both.