Reflections: Time and Temporality in Organizational Change – Why Bother Yet?

Abstract

Apparently, something which we sense as ‘time’ exists, but we do not know or agree on exactly what it is. Using Mead’s theories of ‘the present’ and of ‘the act’, this Reflection exhibits upon different perceptions of time and temporals to understand transition and change in organizations. Time and change are social constructions and thus open to reconstruction. In organizations, time is reconstructed and given various proxies, but is often concealed in studies of change and leadership processes. Besides change, human intelligence is needed to perceive time. Arguably, temporal leadership and change management imply time and require a reciprocal concept of stability as the cornerstones of a theory of organizational processes. Seemingly, organizational change studies have downplayed the social construction of time and temporals as basic assumptions Thus, further theoretical work is needed on time as a catalyst for organizational change.