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Sub-theme 01: [SWG] Organization & Time: The Situated Activity of Time Enactment

Convenors:
Tor Hernes
Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Joanna Karmowska
Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
Claus Rerup
Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Germany

Call for Papers

The third sub-theme of Standing Working Group (SWG) 01 will concern the more situated, on-going activity of time enactment in organizations. The on-going time enactment is crucial for understanding a host of issues, including the very agency of the moment, the roles of temporal structures, and the on-going interplay between evoked pasts and projected futures. It will lend focus to temporal structure, including routines, practices and materiality, through which time is enacted in organizations. It will connect the situated time enactment to different variations and combinations of near and distant pasts and futures, while considering factors such as agency, emotions and aesthetics. The empirical focus invites, but not exclusively, papers on topics such as digitalisation, creative organizations and start-ups.
 
This sub-theme is intended to provide the opportunity for organizational scholars to appreciate the temporal qualities of their research phenomena and to position their work within the broader studies on time and organizations. We are open to variety of approaches to studying organization and time as we strive to identify and build more comprehensive theoretical frameworks on the subject. Our goal is to build an inclusive conversation that appeals to many theories and methods within organizational theory and practice.
 
In keeping with the EGOS Colloquium 2021 theme, we are particularly interested in the temporal aspects that contribute to insights and understanding with a focus on organizing for an inclusive society. Studies across industries and markets are invited at micro- as well as macro-levels of analysis, but with a particular emphasis on the present. We invite diverse philosophical methods and concepts as well as methods of enquiry that permit the temporal nature of organizational processes and practices to be captured. Both conceptual and empirical contributions are welcome.
 
Papers may address, but are not limited to the following themes:

  • Situated time enactment through, for example, practices, routines and materiality, including how practices, routines or materiality in bringing together pasts and futures

  • Interplay between near and distant pasts and/or futures in the present: challenges of temporal sustainability

  • Dynamics of temporal structures; their emergence, endurance and change

  • How the temporal rhythms of emotions and aesthetics are played out through on-going activity

  • Dynamics, enactment and change of time horizons through situated activity

  • Philosophical/theoretical concepts for studying the temporal present and the interplay with pasts and futures

  • Methods and approaches for studying situated activity as it takes place through time
     

Tor Hernes Is currently Professor of Organization Theory at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Denmark, and Adjunct Professor at University of Southeast Norway. He is Director of the Centre for Organizational Time based at CBS and co-leader of the VELUX funded project “The temporality of innovations in the Danish food sector”. Tor works with theories of time and temporality from process philosophy. His empirical research focuses on dynamics between continuity and change in organizations. Tor won the George R. Terry Book Award for his book “A Process Theory of Organization” in 2015 (Oxford University Press, 2014). See more at www.cbs.dk/cot.
Joanna Karmowska is a Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies and International Management at Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom. Her research interests focus on organizational temporariness, creative organizations and SME internationalization. She has published in ‘British Journal of Management’, ‘Journal of World Business’, ‘Urban Studies’, among others. She is associated with the Centre for Organizational Time at Copenhagen Business School.
Claus Rerup is a Professor of Management at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Germany. His areas of expertise include routine dynamics, organizational learning, and attention/sensemaking. In his research, he uses qualitative methods. Claus’ work has been published in academic journals such as ‘Academy of Management Journal’, ‘Administrative Science Quarterly’, ‘Journal of Management’, ‘Journal of Management Studies', and ‘Organization Science’. He has current or previous editorial positions on the boards of the ‘Academy of Management Journal’, ‘Organization Science’, ‘Organization Studies’, and ‘Strategic Organization’. He served as a co-editor of the forthcoming “Handbook on Routine Dynamics” (Cambridge University Press).