Organizational Change and Temporality

Bending the Arrow of Time

Patrick Dawson, Christopher Sykes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317626015
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

Organizational Change and Temporality: Bending the Arrow of Time looks to address the important area of time and temporality, especially as it relates to frameworks and studies for explaining change processes in organizations. It commences with a selective history on the science and philosophy of time before examining the place of time in work and employment, and the presence and absence of theorized time in explanations of organizational change. The intention is to bring to the fore concepts and debates that have largely remained hidden, furthering our knowledge and understanding of time and temporality in changing organizations.

The authors provide a more informed theoretical explanation of the temporal dimensions of organizational change. They examine the concepts and debates behind change theories, philosophical positions and scientific concerns on time and material existence, drawing connections that have previously remained unexplored. This book is key reading for researchers within the organizational change world and will further the academic debate of time and temporality in organizations studies.

Part I
Laying the Foundations

Time and Temporality

1
Introduction

Our sensory perception of space and time is often viewed as changeable in being relative to our frame of reference, and yet, we cannot see, touch, feel, or hear time. Perhaps our sense of time is illusory, and time does not exist as anything other than a social construction. But time may also be understood as all pervasive, immovable, and absolute, existing outside our external observations of movement. Questions abound on the existence of time; for example, if time is relational to matter, how can time exist within a vacuum, where distances between objects or events cannot be measured? Is time temporal with a past, present, and future, or is it a continually reconstituted ‘now’? Do the past and future exist in the same way that the present is said to? Is the arrow of time bendable? There are a host of questions, but for people in society, concerns are generally more grounded in life experiences where perceptions of temporality are, and always will be, integral to understanding and making sense of their existence within the world whether or not time exists.

Time is a concept with which we are all familiar; a term that we use every day, it shadows life experiences and acts as a calendar for marking intervals and events as well as a lens for recalling memories and projecting futures, and yet, it is also something apart, untouchable, and unseen. The scientific arrow of time is a powerful concept for explaining the place of the world in the universe, entropy, and the nature of human existence. It captures the compelling idea of progressive movement as the universe expands towards some distant event and as people move ever forward on their life’s journeys from cradle to grave. It promotes notions of time in which the past is determinant (it has happened and cannot be changed), where the future is full of indeterminate potentialities (it has not yet happened so has not yet come into being), and in which the present is simply a series of now moments (which at one time was a future possibility and soon will be a past moment that cannot be changed). The arrow of time does not however usefully explain human temporal engagement, feelings of timelessness, and the way our experiences of the present are shaped by our expectations of the future and our interpretations of the past (that change over time). The more conventional distinctions and conceptions of time, such as the arrow of time, are increasingly being questioned both in the scientific world of quantum mechanics and among social scientists, including organizational scholars, especially those who draw on the philosophical world of process theorists. For example, Hernes (2014) argues that there has been considerable complacency with regard to time and little if any attention given to the implications of time for the experience of organizing, whereas Dawson (2015) claims that research on time in organizational studies has been rather sporadic, thinly spread, and dominated by considerations of clock time, asking the rhetorical question: ‘Does it matter if clocks can tell us the time but not what time is?’

In addressing this situation we set out to embark on a broad yet selective journey into a variety of time perspectives from branches of science and disciplines in social science. Science in the study of inanimate and animate objects, social science in the study of meaning and human consciousness, and philosophy in the study of reality, knowledge, and existence, all need to be considered in our examination of time for organization studies. In this book we advocate a view of time and temporality that embraces multidirectional non-linear temporal flows whilst also recognising the importance of more traditional conceptions of time in shaping human behaviour. We identify and address a number of emerging issues and pertinent debates that increasingly take centre stage as scholars seek to make sense of the world in which we live. Our principal focus is on organizational change and temporality, which provide both a structure and a lens through which to selectively examine contributions on time to our understanding of change processes in organizations.

Whereas there has been some interest in time and organizations, these have been rather sporadic and thinly spread, and for these reasons, we would support the claim by Hernes (2014) that time and temporality in organization studies are areas that warrant further conceptual and theoretical exploration. As a dimension of organizational change, it is often assumed to be self-evident; it is rarely explained and often underplayed. Simple progressive notions of time pervade research in this area, but these ideas are never fully articulated and often act as implicit notions underpinning models and frameworks that seek to explain the nature of organizational change. Those who view change as emergent or represent change as a punctuated shift in an otherwise stable equilibrium all draw on elements of time as an unfolding tapestry or as noticeable episodes of disruption to an otherwise orderly balance of forces. Time is a vital, an ineluctable component to understanding change, and yet it is rarely unmasked, examined, and theorized. When attention is turned to the paradox of time, long-standing problems of how to explain time gain intellectual momentum, making what appears as common sense complicated and difficult to explicate through language. On this count, the German sociologist Norbert Elias (1897–1990) conceived time as the supreme puzzle that stimulates the inevitable search for solutions, arguing that such hunts ultimately prove to be a ‘wild-goose chase’ for something that we are unable to touch, taste, see, or hear (Elias, 1993: 123). Perhaps this goes some way to explaining the relatively small number of studies and commentaries on time in organization studies, but it does not negate the need for a more thorough investigation, and this is what our book sets out to accomplish.

Dualism: Objective and Subjective Time

There are a range of time perspectives that arise and are discussed throughout this book, but at this early stage, it is worth making some initial comments on the distinction that is often made between objective forms of time and subjective experiences of time. Objective time is often characterized by the clock, either as a stand-alone material object (a wall clock or watch) or as embedded in a raft of electronic and mobile devices most of us use on a regular basis. It is this image of clock time then tends to predominate within the modern industrial world. At any moment the clock provides us with a specific and understandable ‘time’ that we can also use to separate and differentiate from the time that has elapsed and the time that the clock is progressing towards. People use this clock time as a measure of time to schedule and regulate their work tasks, social events, and home activities. Atomic clocks enable the synchronization of precise intervals in the coordination of local sporting activities through to world events and the scheduling and monitoring of, for example, international flights as people travel across the International Date Line (IDL). Different time zones are all controlled by a world clock based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which provides an absolute time reference for human activities on earth. The standardization and formulation of time through the development of early measurement systems through to the atomic clock have enabled interval mapping of geological developments and chronologies of human history as well as providing practical support in space project initiatives, interplanetary travel, and scientific investigations. Yet whilst we can register the life cycle of our existence from birth to death in measured intervals, objective (clock) time ultimately fails to tell us about the meaning of time for our own existence. There is often a misalignment, for example, in the way that we experience time duration with time scientifically measured. In other words, the more existential and subjective elements of time are not fully captured or even usefully explained by precisely measured intervals.

If the clock represents and characterizes time as standard measurable intervals (objective time), then what should we use to capture our subjective experiences of time where, for example, our engagement in an activity can affect our sense of time’s passage? In this we need to turn our attention to consciousness and being, to the introspective realm of our individual existence, as well as to those experiences grounded in social practices that are interactively and intersubjectively constituted. Our intimate encounters with time are marked by tangible moments, by extended, physical, time-pressured activities in, for example, a team sporting competition, and in forms of timeless immersion that provide a disconnect from external reality.

Time can be viewed as both real and ephemeral. It is on the one hand easily recognised and understood and, on the other, untouchable and mysterious, tending to slip away from the edge of understanding as we try to explain what time is. It is a paradox: known in being unknown, an abstract concept, a subjective experience, an objective interval that is made scientifically useful through the Gregorian calendar and the atomic clock. The way time is differentially experienced does not prevent the collective social acceptance and use of reified time in the planning and coordination of work and leisure activities. Nor does this render time as an abstraction any more real, rather it creates a divide in which we can, through language, compare and contrast objective and subjective forms of time, whilst in life we move seamlessly between multiple temporal worlds.

Although the dualism represented by objective and subjective time is a boundary construct, the division is important for three main reasons. First, the concept of objective time is useful in examining the growth of commerce and industrial organization and the importance of clock time to the development of organizations and innovations in management. Second, the construct has been used extensively to inform the development of theories for organizational change and acts to shape organizational discourse and formal rational narratives that are in turn used to prescribe best practice stage models for managing organizational change. Third, the mismatch between objective and subjective time is often used to explain change phenomena associated with, for example, polyvocality, sensemaking, resistance, and politics. But this artificial division can also misdirect in moving beyond a useful explanatory category to a characterization of the way life ‘really’ is.

In developing our own perspective on organizational change and temporality, we highlight the importance of multiple temporalities in the way that individuals and groups accommodate different conceptions of time in giving and making senses of their experiences of change in organizations and the interplay and interpenetration of objective and subjective time. Although the divisional construct seeks to reinforce a more clearly delineated, separatist world, we contend that the two coexist in relation to each other and as such are mutually constituted in everyday life. We also advocate that too much attention has been placed on the objective dimensions of time in theoretical explanations and especially on models and concepts that attempt to master, control, and predict change. We contend that even within frameworks that have been less prescriptive, these elements have crept in with a tendency to overemphasise objective forms of time and to downplay the more subjective experiential dimensions. We aim to counter this tendency in a more thorough examination of time and organizational change especially: as it relates to subjective time; in examining the use of objective time in change models; through considering the relationship of objective and subjective time as separate, identifiable elements (divisional construct) and as mutually constituting (relational); and more generally, in exploring the concept of temporality in relation to the complex processes of organizational change.

Main Aims of the Book

As process researchers we are interested in the history of cultural practices and the way that they unfold and are shaped and shape how we live and experience time as part of our physical and existential existence. Although our main concern is with organization studies and models of change, we also intend to step outside of our mainstream discipline to draw on concepts and ideas from major philosophical and scientific thinkers and then to bring these back in to our critique and analyses of the use of time in formulating explanations of organizational change. Two aspects about time and temporality that we have already discussed and that we find particularly striking are: first, the way that individuals and groups appear to move seamlessly between time as experienced and time as measured, and yet as scholars, we find it immensely difficult to explain this complex interplay of time; and second, how theories of organizational change often take a simple progressive view of time (linear temporality) in which many aspects of time are ignored or simply taken for granted. This once again points to the need for further research, conceptual refinement, and theoretical discussion, as Roe and colleagues note (Roe, Waller, & Clegg, 2009: 1):

One might think that the temporal aspects of everyday human life would saturate the field of management and organization theory but, instead, one is more likely to find that it is relatively timeless knowledge which fills our textbooks and journals.

Our book sets out to address these gaps in our knowledge and understanding with a particular focus on the way they relate to frameworks and studies for explaining change processes in organizations. Our five key aims can be summarized as follows:

1. To cover an important gap that we have identified in the field of organization studies, namely, how time and dimensions of temporality relate to explanations (models and frameworks) of organizational change. Our intention is to unpack the implicit concepts of time that underpin the main theories of organizational change and then to critically evaluate and comment upon these perspectives to provide a more informed theoretical explanation of the temporal dimensions of organizational change.
2. To explore how time has become institutionalized, objectified, and taken for granted in the way that work is managed and controlled in organizations whilst also providing a more explicit and thorough understanding of subjective notions of time and how subjective temporalities relate to the way that people experience and make sense of change in organizations.
3. To investigate and provide a more robust explanation of the apparently seamless movement between objective and subjective forms of time exhibited in workplace behaviours and to uncover the ways that power shapes structures and meaning making as these are played out in the social and political exigencies evident in everyday practices (that are paradoxically very difficult to capture and explain in language).
4. To examine the relationship between objective time and conventional views of change as a naturally occurring (forward) progression (as captured in the concept of the arrow of time) and subjective temporal experience. We seek to clarify this relationship both as separate categories of time that provides analytical support and informs theorization (yet in presenting this division encounters the predicament of dualism) and as interpenetrating mutually constituting facets of time (a relational view in which the multiplicities of time exist in relation to each other).
5. To clarify and refine process perspectives to enable greater insight across the field in broadening our understanding of time, temporality, and change and, in so doing, contribute to further conceptualization, theorization, and practice.

In approaching these aims we cover a range of perspectives, themes, and debates in and around organization studies. In our focus on organizational change and temporality, the objective/subjective divide is useful, but as already indicated, this boundary construction does not fully explain time and can, if used as a time map, inadvertently constrain and limit disc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• PART I Laying the Foundations: Time and Temporality
• PART II Organizational Change: Time and Temporality
• Author Index
• Subject Index