Temporal Dynamics in Organizational Change
Summary
Temporal dynamics in organizational change examine how patterns of time, pacing and scheduling shape the way organisations evolve, adapt and innovate. This field highlights that change is not a singular event but a process unfolding across multiple temporal layers—moment-to-moment interactions, project cycles, strategic horizons and historical legacies. Scholars emphasise how temporal structures such as routines, deadlines and rhythms can both enable and constrain transformation. For example, aligning short-term operational deadlines with long-term strategic goals demands deliberate coordination of conflicting temporalities. Equally, sudden shocks or crises can accelerate change by compressing time, yet may induce reactive rather than creative responses. Research traces how organisations negotiate the past, present and future through practices of anticipation, retrospection and synchronisation. The global significance of this work is evident in contexts as diverse as large infrastructure projects, digitalisation efforts in real-estate ecosystems and public agencies responding to disruptive events. Practitioners apply these insights to design change initiatives that account for human experiences of time—such as waiting, urgency and temporal ambiguity—and to develop mechanisms for entraining teams around shared schedules and milestones. In doing so, organisations can improve resilience, foster innovation and sustain meaningful progress without succumbing to the pitfalls of misaligned temporal expectations.
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Temporal Dynamics in Organizational Change publication trend
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Technical terms
Temporal structuring: The process of organising work and interactions into rhythms, deadlines and sequences that shape collective activity.
Entrainment: The alignment of individual or group timing with external schedules, rhythms or deadlines to achieve coordinated action.
Temporal translation: The negotiation and reframing of divergent temporal expectations among multiple actors to create shared schedules.
Temporal work: The practices through which organisational actors actively shape and manage experiences of past, present and future time.
References
- Stuck in Temporal Translation? Challenges of discrepant temporal structures in interorganizational project collaboration. Organization Studies (2022).
- Digitalization, innovation capabilities and absorptive capacity in the Swedish real estate ecosystem. Facilities (2022).
- Do Shocks Change Organizations? The Case of NASA. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (2011).
- Organizational transformation: Handling the double-edged sword of urgency. Long Range Planning (2022).
- When Time Falls Apart: Re-centring human time in organisations through the lived experience of waiting. Organization Studies (2023).
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