Temporal Co-Dependence between Temporary and Permanent Organising: Tackling Grand Challenges in the Case of the Refugee Crisis in Germany

Abstract

Tensions arising from temporary versus permanent forms of organising are a managerially relevant and commonplace phenomenon. How ensuing tensions unfold and what implications this has for organising responses across different levels of organising is the key concern of our inquiry. The authors draw upon a case study of what has been dubbed the German refugee crisis to make three contributions to the literature on managing temporary organisational phenomena: First, the authors offer a temporal continuum along which one can distinguish between comparatively fast responses of emergent temporary organisations on the micro-level and relatively slow responses by macro-level institutions that are predominantly engaged in permanent organising. The authors built upon this continuum to highlight the role of temporal lags, which arise from the different reaction times of micro- and macro-level organisations and which is filled by the respective other organisational form, a phenomenon the authors label temporal co-dependence. Second, the authors offer a distinction between deliberate and emergent forms of temporal organising. Third, the authors unearth boundary conditions that make the likelihood of this interplay between different levels possible.

Citation

Danner-Schröder, A. and Müller-Seitz, G. (2020), "Temporal Co-Dependence between Temporary and Permanent Organising: Tackling Grand Challenges in the Case of the Refugee Crisis in Germany", Braun, T. and Lampel, J. (Ed.) Tensions and paradoxes in temporary organizing (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 67), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 179-208. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20200000067014