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We argue that our understanding of how institutions matter has been undermined by a piecemeal approach to temporality in institutional analyses. This paper addresses this shortcoming in the literature. We bring temporality to the fore by conceptualizing practices, which constitute institutions, as understood, situated, and coordinated in time by temporal structures. We elaborate an integrated framework of temporal structures that consist of three types: temporal patterns, temporal conceptions, and temporal orientations – and outline how each type contributes to the reproduction of practices. We discuss the implications of this framework for sustainability initiatives and conclude by suggesting future avenues of research on the temporal foundations of institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore time dilemmas in ethnographic research and develops a facilitating frame for thinking about temporality. Core concepts developed include: temporal awareness that refers to widening of the understanding and sensitivity to time issues; temporal practices which relate to how the researcher learns to deal with, for example, contradictory conceptions of time in the pragmatics of conducting fieldwork and in the analysis of competing data; and temporal merging which is used to refer to the interweaving of objective and subjective concepts of time, and to the way that the past and prospective futures shape human experience of the present.

An extended case study on workplace change is selectively drawn upon in discussing time and ethnographic research. Two closely related stories are used to illustrate aspects of temporality. These include a discussion of the way that stories in organizing, representing, simplifying and imposing structure (become theory-laden) often compressing the subjective experiences of lived time into a more formalized linear presentation that may inadvertently petrify temporal sensemaking; and an examination of how the polyphony of storying during times of change highlights temporal sensemaking and sensegiving through asynchronous features that emphasize volatility and non-linearity in explaining the way that people experience change.

The conundrum that competing concepts of time often present for the researcher is in the juxtapositions that generate loose ends that appear to require resolution. Temporal merging in being able to accommodate the intertwining of objective and subjective time, temporal practices in being able to use different concepts of time without trying to resolve them during the collection and analyses of data, and temporal awareness in being able to accept the paradox of time in the use of a relational-temporal perspective, all open up opportunities for greater insight and understanding in engaging in ethnographic studies on changing organizations.

There are a number of practical implications that arise from the paper in doing longitudinal research on workplace change. Four summarized here comprise: the significance of sustained fieldwork and not trying to shortcut time dimension to ethnographic research; the importance of developing temporal practices for dealing with objective and subjective time as well as the interweaving of temporal modes in data collection, analysis and write-up; the value of engaging with rather than resolving contradictions; chronological objective time is good for planning the research whilst subjective time is able to capture the non-linearity of lived time and the importance of context.

A new facilitating frame is developed for dealing with time tensions that are often downplayed in research through the concepts of temporal awareness, practices and merging. The frame provides temporal insight and promotes the use of a relational processual perspective. It is also shown how stories present in the data, in the writing up of material for different audiences, in chronologies and events, and in the sensemaking and sensegiving of individuals and groups as they describe and shape their lived experiences of change – are useful devices for dealing with the conundrum of time in ethnographic research.

Rational time accompanies the onslaught of hyper-globalization. The Inuit of Arviat, Nunavut, paradoxically use rational time to resist rational time, setting aside temporal zones to protect Western cultural paradigms from impinging on their lives all of the time. Additionally, because temporal norms indicate membership in a group, doing time differently is one of the most effective ways in which to say “I’m not a part of your group!” While resisting rational clock-time, for example by walking off the job each day promptly at 4:59 pm, the Inuit of Arviat nevertheless have a myriad of clocks in their homes. This chapter explores their temporal resistance and the riddle of “why so many clocks in Arviat?”

To explain how genres structure temporal coordination in virtual teams over time.

The first year e‐mail archive of a small distributed software development start‐up was coded and analyzed and these primary data were complemented with interviews of the key participants and examination of notes from the weekly phone meetings.

In this paper, it is found that members of a small start‐up organization temporally coordinated their dispersed activities through everyday communicative practices, thus accomplishing both the distributed development of a software system and the creation of a robust virtual team. In particular, the LC members used three specific genres – status reports, bug/error notifications, and update notifications – and one genre system – phone meeting management – to coordinate their distributed software development over time.

The study confirms the various suggestions from prior virtual team research that structuring communication and work process is an important mechanism for the temporal coordination of dispersed activities. In particular, an attempt has been made to show that the notions of genre and genre system are particularly useful to make sense of and analyze how such structuring actually occurs over time.

In this paper, the research focus is shifted from how a given set of temporal coordination mechanisms affect team performance to how coordination mechanisms emerge, are stabilized, and adapted over time. It is also shown how the notion of genre may be used to shed light on the practices through which temporal coordination is accomplished in geographically distributed teams.

This paper aims to analyze the implications of technology change on management control. Specifically, the paper seeks to examine the deployment of an enterprise resource planning system (ERP), and to apply a temporal perspective of practice as a theoretical tool to discuss the effects of the ERP on the organization's management control systems.

The research is based on a longitudinal case study of a North American Financial. Data were collected during the deployment of a new management control system. The paper introduces the temporal view of agency as a means of examining the practices involved in control system.

The observations suggest that ERP can create an illusion of control, and may jeopardize the systems they are meant to augment through the presence of practices meant to by‐pass the control system and invisible work (work‐arounds).

The paper seeks to augment existing studies of technology mitigated change through framing the analysis in a temporal practice perspective to offer insight into the paths of action individuals adopt: the how and why.

Temporal consumption experiences have been conceptualised as universal, subjective or practice-based experiences. Little research, though, addresses such experiences in conjunction with the repeated and situational consumption events that bring them about. The purpose of this paper is to extend current knowledge by examining how the temporal and situational intertwine during consumption events. For this purpose, the concept of a consumption timecycle based on the research data is constructed.

The paper takes a longitudinal and researcher-led approach to study temporal consumption experiences. The data was collected through participant observations, video recordings and personal subjective introspections during three consecutive annual Nordic motorcycle consumer trade shows (2014–2016). The data was analysed using an interpretive approach.

The results demonstrate five temporalities that characterise a consumption timecycle as follows: emerging, core, intensifying, fading and idle-time temporalities. The features of these temporal experiences are presented in the conclusions section of the paper.

Recalled temporal experiences are mediated experiences and they differ from lived experiences. The transferability or generalisability of the results might be limited, as the case is situated in the Nordic context.

The paper presents the novel concept of a consumption timecycle that extends current debates about consumer time. The consumption timecycle is contrasted with established temporal concepts in consumer and marketing research.

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and, at its core, Machine Learning (ML) offer opportunities for organizations to develop new or enhance existing capabilities. Despite the endless possibilities, organizations face operational challenges in harvesting the value of ML-based capabilities (MLbC), and current research has yet to explicate these challenges and theorize their remedies. To bridge the gap, this study explored the current practices to propose a systematic way of orchestrating MLbC development, which is an extension of ongoing digitalization of organizations.

Data were collected from Finland's Artificial Intelligence Accelerator (FAIA) and complemented by follow-up interviews with experts outside FAIA in Europe, China and the United States over four years. Data were analyzed through open coding, thematic analysis and cross-comparison to develop a comprehensive understanding of the MLbC development process.

The analysis identified the main components of MLbC development, its three phases (development, release and operation) and two major MLbC development challenges: Temporal Complexity and Context Sensitivity. The study then introduced Fostering Temporal Congruence and Cultivating Organizational Meta-learning as strategic practices addressing these challenges.

This study offers a better theoretical explanation for the MLbC development process beyond MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) and its hindrances. It also proposes a practical way to align ML-based applications with business needs while accounting for their structural limitations. Beyond the MLbC context, this study offers a strategic framework that can be adapted for different cases of digital transformation that include automation and augmentation of work.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the concept of information in relation to temporality within the context of climate change communication. Furthermore, the paper aims to highlight the empirical richness of information as a concept by analysing its use in context.

The discussion is based on 14 semi-structured interviews with initiators and collaborators of 6 open letters on climate change published in 2018–2019. By taking three specific notions the interviewees introduced—fast food information, information quality and information gap–as the analytical point of departure, the study aims for a contextual understanding of information grounded in temporal sensitivity.

The paper finds that information in the context of open letters is informed by different, and at times contradicting, temporalities and timescapes which align with various material, institutional and discursive practices. Based on this finding, the paper argues that notions of information are intrinsically linked to the act of communicating, and they should be viewed as co-constituting each other.

The paper contributes with an empirically informed discussion regarding the concept of information as it is used in a specific context. It illustrates how “information” is far from being understood in a singular fashion, but is made up of multifaceted and at times contradictory understandings. Ultimately, they correspond to why and how one communicates climate change information.

This article positions actor–-network theory (ANT) as a practice perspective and deploys it to explore the performative practices of internal consultancy teams as they implemented major programmatic change projects within a global telecommunication company. The change process required the creation of a “change network” that emerged as a boundary spanning and organising network as the consultants sought to implement and translate a highly structured change methodology and introduce new meta-routines within the organisation.

By combining the methodological datum of ANT to “follow the actors” (whatever form they take) with the guiding principle of practice theory to focus on practices rather than practitioners, the research explored the in-between temporal spaces of performative practices as they unfolded in relation to standardised routines, material artefacts and the tools and techniques of a systematic change methodology. By a method of “zooming out” and “zooming in” the research examined both the larger context of action and practice in which the change network emerged and the consultants' performative practices; but without falling into static macro–micro dualism, or a purely ethnographic “thick description” of practice. The research is based on interviews (25), participant observation and a review of the extensive documentation of the change methodology.

The findings indicate both how consultants' performative practices are embedded in the social and material arrangements of a change network, and why the intentional, expert or routine enactment of a highly standardised change methodology into practice is intrinsically problematic. Ultimately, the consultants could not rely on knowledge as a fixed, routine or pre-given empirical entity that predefined their actions. Instead, the consultants' performative practices unfolded in temporal spaces of in-betweenness as their actions and practices navigated shifting and multiple boundaries while confronting disparate and often irreconcilable ideas, choices and competing interests.

As an ANT practice perspective, the research blends mixed methods in an illustrative case study, so its findings are contextual, although the methodological rationale may be applicable to other contexts of practice.

The theoretical framing of the research contributes to repositioning ANT as practice theory perspective on change with a central focus on performative practice. The illustrative case demonstrates how a boundary spanning “change network” emerged and how it partly defined the temporal spaces of in-betweenness in which the consultants operated.

The purpose of this paper is to identify, classify and analyse temporality in information systems development (ISD) literature.

The authors address the temporality and ISD research gap by using a framework – which classifies time into three categories: conceptions of time, mapping activities to time and actors relating to time. The authors conduct a systematic literature review which investigates time in ISD within the Senior Scholars' Basket, Information Technology & People (IT&P), and top two information systems conferences over the past 20 years. The search strategy resulted in 9,850 studies of which 47 were identified as primary papers.

The results reveal that ISD research is ill equipped for contemporary thinking around time. This systematic literature review (SLR) contributes to ISD by finding the following gaps in the literature: (1) clock time is dominant and all other types of time are under-researched; (2) contributions to mapping activities to time is lacking and existing studies focus on single ISD projects rather multiple complex ISD projects; (3) research on actors relating to time is lacking; (4) existing ISD studies which contribute to temporal characteristics are fragmented and lack integration with other categories of time and (5) ISD methodology papers lack contributions to temporal characteristics and fail to acknowledge and contribute to time as a multifaceted interrelated concept.

This work has developed the first SLR on temporality in ISD. This study provides a starting point for ISD researchers and ISD practitioners to test commonly held temporal assumptions of ISD researchers and practitioners.