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Sungu Armagan, Manuel Portugal Ferreira, Bryan L. Bonner and Gerardo A. Okhuysen
This paper discusses national differences in the interpretation of time in mixed motive decision contexts, such as negotiation. Specifically, we consider how members of…
Abstract
This paper discusses national differences in the interpretation of time in mixed motive decision contexts, such as negotiation. Specifically, we consider how members of different national cultures (Portugal, Turkey, and the United States) experience temporality in these situations. We argue that cultural temporality such as polychronicity, future orientation, and uncertainty avoidance form part of a broader national environment. The national environment is also expressed in national stability factors such as legal systems, family ties, and homogeneity of populations. We propose that temporality and stability aspects of national environment determine negotiation paradigms, which subsequently influence temporality in negotiations. We conclude by suggesting that inclusion of complex and interdependent national environment factors in the study of negotiation has the potential to substantially advance our understanding of mixed motive decision situations.
Kjell Tryggestad, Lise Justesen and Jan Mouritsen
The purpose of this paper is to explore how animals can become stakeholders in interaction with project management technologies and what happens with project temporalities…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how animals can become stakeholders in interaction with project management technologies and what happens with project temporalities when new and surprising stakeholders become part of a project and a recognized matter of concern to be taken into account.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a qualitative case study of a project in the building industry. The authors use actor‐network theory (ANT) to analyze the emergence of animal stakeholders, stakes and temporalities.
Findings
The study shows how project temporalities can multiply in interaction with project management technologies and how conventional linear conceptions of project time may be contested with the emergence of new non‐human stakeholders and temporalities.
Research limitations/implications
The study draws on ANT to show how animals can become stakeholders during the project. Other approaches to animal stakeholders may provide other valuable insights.
Practical implications
Rather than taking the linear time conception for granted, the management challenge and practical implication is to re‐conceptualize time by taking heterogeneous temporalities into account. This may require investments in new project management technologies.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the literatures on project temporalities and stakeholder theory by connecting them to the question of non‐human stakeholders and to project management technologies.
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Carl Kronlid and Enrico Baraldi
This paper aims to focus on time-constrained interactions involving industry and public actors, mainly universities, conducting research. This kind of interaction has…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to focus on time-constrained interactions involving industry and public actors, mainly universities, conducting research. This kind of interaction has become increasingly important to develop new pharmaceuticals, especially antibiotics. The proposed theoretical frame relies on industrial marketing and purchasing’s interactive perspective on inter-organizational relationships and especially the activities, resource, actors model, combined with key concepts on temporary organizing and project management. This study identifies the temporality and time constraints imposed by this project on public–private interactions, specific coordination tools used to create such temporality and time constraints and their consequences, including positive and negative effects for the interacting parties.
Design/methodology/approach
The study builds on a single in-depth qualitative case study of a major antibiotics R&D collaboration project called ENABLE.
Findings
For negative consequences, this model includes the need for constantly rebuilding trust due to fast turnover of actors, difficulties in combining resources as efficiently as possible, resource constraints, bottlenecks and neglect of some activities, such as publishing, which are normally pivotal for universities. Despite these problematic consequences of temporality, resources are rapidly made available and new competencies learned quickly. Another positive effect is the possibility to achieve complex adaptations of resources and activities even in short time frames. Importantly, projects can act as a springboard for the parties to continue collaboration and in the long term develop a continuous business relationship.
Originality/value
Based on the findings the authors develop a model of time-constrained inter-organizational interaction between public and private organizations.
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The aim of this paper was to describe the aesthetics of self-realization as a way to overcome depersonalization, routinization, and linear temporality in the…
Abstract
The aim of this paper was to describe the aesthetics of self-realization as a way to overcome depersonalization, routinization, and linear temporality in the organizational setting. Artists’ self-portraits (Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Dali) are used as metaphors of organizational life. In doing so, they could enable organizational members to reinvent modes of thinking, speaking, and behaving in the workplace. Philosophical novels (Kafka, Proust, and Murakami) could also unveil hidden aspects of human existence that are quite relevant for the organizational life. Artists’ self-portraits and philosophical novels could then help organizational members to avoid estranged depersonalization, while designing their own project of self-realization. Reinventing the real world of organizational life implies to emphasize both moral imagination (against routinization) and openness to all kinds of temporality (against linear temporality). Describing the aesthetics of self-realization could make organizational members more aware of their capacity to endorse radical humanism without destroying the organization itself.
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Workplace temporalities are being reshaped under globalization. Some scholars argue that work time is becoming more flexible, de-territorializing, and even disappearing. I…
Abstract
Workplace temporalities are being reshaped under globalization. Some scholars argue that work time is becoming more flexible, de-territorializing, and even disappearing. I provide an alternative picture of what is happening to work time by focusing on the customer service call center industry in India. Through case studies of three firms, and interviews with 80 employees, managers, and officials, I show how this industry involves a “reversal” of work time in which organizations and their employees shift their schedules entirely to the night. Rather than liberation from time, workers experience a hyper-management, rigidification, and re-territorialization of temporalities. This temporal order pervades both the physical and virtual tasks of the job, and has consequences for workers’ health, families, future careers, and the wider community of New Delhi. I argue that this trend is prompted by capital mobility within the information economy, expansion of the service sector, and global inequalities of time, and is reflective of an emerging stratification of employment temporalities across lines of the Global North and South.
Iben Sandal Stjerne, Matthias Wenzel and Silviya Svejenova
Organization and management scholars are increasingly interested in understanding how “fluid” forms of organizing contribute to the tackling of grand challenges. These…
Abstract
Organization and management scholars are increasingly interested in understanding how “fluid” forms of organizing contribute to the tackling of grand challenges. These forms are fluid in that they bring together a dynamic range of actors with diverse purposes, expertise, and interests in a temporary and nonbinding way. Fluid forms of organizing enable flexible participation. Yet, they struggle to gain and sustain commitment. In this case study of the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, which supports the achievement of zero hunger by 2030, we explore how the temporality of narratives contributes to actors’ commitment to tackling grand challenges in fluid forms of organizing. In our analysis, we identify three types of narratives – universal, situated, and bridging – and discern their different temporal horizons and temporal directions. In doing so, our study sheds light on the contributions by the temporality of narratives to fostering commitment to tackling grand challenges in fluid forms of organizing. It suggests the importance of considering “multitemporality,” i.e., the plurality of connected temporalities, rather than foregrounding either the present or the future.
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Pamela J. McKenzie and Elisabeth Davies
This article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up…
Abstract
Purpose
This article explores the varied ways that individuals create and use calendars, planners and other cognitive artifacts to document the multiple temporalities that make up their everyday lives. It reveals the hidden documentary time work required to synchronize, coordinate or entrain their activities to those of others.
Design/methodology/approach
We interviewed 47 Canadian participants in their homes, workplaces or other locations and photographed their documents. We analyzed qualitatively; first thematically to identify mentions of times, and then relationally to reveal how documentary time work was situated within participants' broader contexts.
Findings
Participants' documents revealed a wide variety of temporalities, some embedded in the templates they used, and others added by document creators and users. Participants' documentary time work involved creating and using a variety of tools and strategies to reconcile and manage multiple temporalities and indexical time concepts that held multiple meanings. Their work employed both standard “off the shelf” and individualized “do-it-yourself” approaches.
Originality/value
This article combines several concepts of invisible work (document work, time work, articulation work) to show both how individuals engage in documentary time work and how that work is situated within broader social and temporal contexts and standards.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of the proportion of temporary workers on the profit‐to‐sales ratio (or price‐cost margin) of Spanish manufacturing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of the proportion of temporary workers on the profit‐to‐sales ratio (or price‐cost margin) of Spanish manufacturing firms in the 1990s.
Design/methodology/approach
The relation between the proportion of temporary workers and the profit‐to‐sales ratio is estimated using the information provided by the “Encuesta Sobre Estrategias Empresariales” (Entrepreneurship Strategy Survey), a panel data set for the Spanish manufacturing sector carried out over the period 1990‐1999. The model is estimated in logarithmic first differences in order to remove fixed effects. To correct endogeneity problems, the instrumental variables method has been used.
Findings
The outcomes show that the rise in the proportion of temporary workers reduces the price‐cost margin of Spanish firms. It also leads to a fall in labour productivity and in the hourly average wage, and to an increase in the total cost of production.
Research limitations/implications
The dataset refers only to manufacturing industry. It would be interesting to extend the analysis, if possible, to the service sector of Spanish economy.
Practical implications
The outcomes show that those policies oriented to reduce the high proportion of temporary workers (which has been over 30 per cent since 1990) by means of stimulating permanent labour contracts are expected to be positive for Spanish firms.
Originality/value
This article is the first empirical work aimed at assessing the impact of the proportion of temporary workers on the profit‐to‐sales ratio.
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The introduction to Volume 17 of Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, reviews prior literature and issues in the studies of time at work. It…
Abstract
The introduction to Volume 17 of Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, reviews prior literature and issues in the studies of time at work. It provides a brief summary of the chapters in this volume and addresses some of the major themes, particularly those with which sociologists might be unfamiliar, since this volume is, quite deliberately, interdisciplinary. The chapters in this volume demonstrate the complexities of workplace temporalities in the new economy and suggest that incorporating inquiry about time will inform understanding not only of the contemporary workplace, but also of social life more broadly.