Multi-Temporality and the Ghostly: How Communing with Times Past Informs Organizational Futures

Abstract

Despite growing interest in time, history, and memory, we lack an understanding of the multi-temporal reality of organizations – how past, present, and future intersect to inform organizational life. In assuming that legacies are bequeathed from past to present, there has been little theorization on how this works practically. We propose that the lexicon of the ghostly can help. We contribute a theory of ghostly influence from past to future by offering a framework focusing on core moments of organizational existence: foundation, strategic change, and longevity commemoration, and illustrate this using a case study of consumer goods multinational Procter & Gamble (1930–2010). In showing that organizational ghosts, absent members whose presence is consequential to the actions of living members, are active and dialogical, we illuminate a dialectical interaction missing from other non-linear conceptions of temporality. This emphasizes the performative force of a dynamic past that provides an inference to action in the present and future.