Organizational Time in Historical Perspective

This chapter examines how time and temporality have been analyzed in social and organizational theory. Specifically, it discusses forms of analysis developed prior to the purported synthesizing of conceptual dualities under the “postmodern turn” (Nowotny, 1994; Orlikowski and Yates, 2002). The chapter reviews some of the main concepts and theories of time developed historically by sociologists and anthropologists, and describes how—when applied in organizational research—they have yielded rich and diverse insights into workplace behavior. By drawing upon some of the major foundational figures in the sociology of time—such as Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Georges Gurvitch, Karl Marx, Pitirim Sorokin—we note not only differences between their positions, but also how such differences, when contrasted systematically, offer a broad basis for appreciating time as reflecting a cyclical as well as linear, heterogeneous as well as homogeneous, and processual as well as structural phenomenon in theoretical and empirical investigation.

Events and the Becoming of Organizational Temporality

This chapter discusses the becoming of events as complex, emerging, and relationally connected phenomena that come into being through their immanent interplay. In this view, events emerge and change as actors move through time. For example, events that turned out to be consequential at a later stage were not seen as such while they were taking place. Yet, there is arguably a potential for “eventness” in every happening. I will draw upon examples furnished by “Time” by Pink Floyd and President Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg to discuss how, drawing on Whitehead’s epochal theory of time, we may expand our understanding of events. A deeper process ontological understanding of events enables a richer understanding of the mutually constitutive dynamics between organizational continuity and discontinuity.

Appropriating the Past in Organizational Change Management

This chapter offers an analysis of organizational change management in a Scandinavian telecom from a historical perspective. Based on an ethnographic study, we investigate how the past was appropriated by managers for the purpose of implementing performance management in the company’s operations department. By combining Bourdieusian theory with a narrative approach to analysis, the chapter provides an alternative view on the impact of history to organizational change management studies by bridging objective and subjective elements of history. This is achieved by illustrating how practice brings together two modes of existence of history in action—that is, how habitus and field dialectically adjust to each other while endowing actors with a “practical sense” that allows them to appropriate history in practice. We show how actors’ inclination to appropriate and narrate history in certain ways was itself a product of historical acquisition derived from their experience in the departmental field of struggle.

Historical Consciousness as a Management Tool

The increasing call for historical perspectives in organization studies illustrates that history has become a central concern. While most studies of organizational history focus on the use of history by top managers, which we propose to call “tight history” (top-down), they seem to ignore the informal articulations of history that evolve from the lower levels of the organization (bottom-up), which we offer to label “loose history.” So far, scholars have largely focused on one level of analysis, but have not explored how the levels articulate with each other. This chapter investigates the activities and processes by which actors use history at both the individual and the institutional levels. Thus, our work aims to contribute to the understanding of processes by which organizations develop different forms of historical consciousness by promoting both tight and loose history, highlighting the collective dimension in both the process and the agency of historical consciousness.

Time, Temporality, and History in Process Organization Studies

Time and history have emerged as prominent subjects of interest in organization studies. This volume stands testament to the recent foregrounding of time and history as focal objects of organizational study and scholarship. The precise relationship of temporality and history to processes of change remains under-theorized, and we lack a coherent set of conceptual tools that can be applied to ongoing research directed to addressing the puzzle. The chapters in this volume, devoted to understanding temporality and history as a central element of process, offer a glimpse of both a defining puzzle and a set of emergent conceptual tools that might be useful for scholars engaged in historical and temporally sensitive organizational research. Before elaborating their contribution to the emergent theoretical scaffolding of historical and temporal organizational scholarship, this chapter presents the puzzle and its evolution in prior literature.

Capturing the Experience of Living Forward from Within the Flow

In this chapter, we explore a methodology for “process as withness” (Fachin and Langley, 2018). The goal is to study the experience of “living forward” by creating “narratives of prospect” (Weick, 1999). The chapter builds on Shotter’s work (2006; 2009) on a withness approach, which helps in understanding the struggles of living forward experienced by practitioners and researchers alike. Withness until now has remained philosophical with a few vignettes by Shotter (2006; 2009). We operationalize withness through embedding it within pragmatist inquiry (Farjoun, Ansell, and Boin, 2015; Lorino et al., 2011; Martela, 2015). For this, we propose to build on the existing links between a withness approach and pragmatist inquiry in the work of James, Dewey, and Mead, but to extend these to fuse a withness approach and pragmatist inquiry into “pragmatist withness inquiry.” We end with a call for other researchers to learn from, criticize, and build on our attempts to develop “pragmatist withness inquiry.” The challenges are dialogue, access to doubtful situations, and creating “narratives of prospect.”

Studying Organization from the Perspective of the Ontology of Temporality

This chapter suggests an events-based approach that can be used to understand organization as a temporal phenomenon. To date, the ontology of time sees the present, the past, and the future as different and discrete temporal epochs and thus prevents us from understanding activities as a creative process in which the past, the present, and the future are constantly redefined to give meaning and sense to actors. Conversely, an ontology of temporality enables us to grasp the situated nature of organizational phenomena. We argue that an events-based approach provides a better understanding of how past, present, and future events are constantly co-defined and configured, thereby enabling actors to gain a sense of continuity, i.e. a sense about their history, the present moment, and an expected future. Following a discussion of the nature of an events-based approach, we discuss the contributions and implications of such an approach by showing how it redefines the very subject of organization and brings insights to the study of contemporary organizational phenomena.

The Life and Work of Edith Penrose

Edith Penrose (1914–96) was a pioneering and original scholar whose best-known work, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm written over sixty years ago, has had enduring influence and is now regarded as a “classic” in strategy, management, and organization studies. With the benefit of extensive secondary literature and a recent biography this chapter explores the relationship between her life and work, the people and events that shaped her work, and the importance of history, time, and process in her thinking. The chapter also considers how studying the classics can inform our understanding of the history and evolution of organization studies.

Temporality, Aspect, and Narrative

This chapter examines the phenomenological conditions of the possibility of our experience of narrated process. It begins with Husserl’s account of retention and protention, which are the capacities by which we retain the immediate past and anticipate the immediate future. This allows us to experience processes. The chapter then turns to Heidegger, according to whom the experience of process depends on a sense of what is relevant to the process. Here a different axis of temporal analysis comes into view: temporal aspect. Temporal aspect expresses the internal temporal structure of what we understand. Heidegger analyzes temporal aspects as part of his account of what he calls “originary temporality.” His analysis can be used to shed light on narrative understanding, and so, of how we understand ourselves and what we are up to.

The Sociology of Time

Focusing on the very notion of a “sociology of time,” this chapter examines the fundamental components of what constitutes a distinctly non-physical, sociocultural perspective on temporality. It begins by introducing the notion of a pronouncedly artificial “sociotemporal order” consisting of social norms and traditions of measuring, reckoning, and organizing time. It then proceeds to discuss major ways of collectively experiencing time, such as the utilitarian view of time, the mathematical conception of time, and both the linear and circular views of temporality. The chapter concludes by examining both the semiotic and the political dimensions of the social organization of time.