Call for Papers

Time is “a silent partner in everything we do” (McGrath & Kelly, 1992: 399). As such, it is central to our understanding of routines as core patterns and processes that constitute organizations (Feldman et al., 2021). Routines entail and generate various temporal features and dynamics. For example, actors can perform routines at different paces (Geiger et al., 2021), in distinct sequences (Kremser & Blagoev, 2021), and based on specific times (Turner & Rindova, 2021). Furthermore, performing routines in the present inevitably entails relations with the past (e.g., actors’ experiences in past performances) and the future (e.g., expectations about how routines might be performed). Hence, routines are not only fundamentally temporal phenomena, but also a primary means through which organizations enact and negotiate their relations to time in its various dimensions and manifestations.
 
The purpose of this sub-theme is to bring together scholars who work at the crossroads of routine dynamics and temporality. Both research streams have recently converged in their interest in illuminating the enacted nature of time. This enacted nature of time directs us toward the situatedness of actions, as well as their temporal features and inter-temporal relations with other actions. It builds on an understanding of human agency as a “temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past [...], but also oriented toward the future [...] and toward the present” (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 963). From this perspective, agency is central for understanding how time is enacted in the ongoing present, wherein the past and future are continuously defined and redefined as actors go about their everyday work (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998; Hernes, 2022).
 
Research on routine dynamics has increasingly embraced a temporal lens to gain deeper insight into the performing and patterning of routines. However, much of this research has been grounded in a structural understanding of temporality as expressed in malleable temporal structures (Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). We believe that routine dynamics research can advance through a more nuanced and processual understanding of time that foregrounds the ongoing interweaving of past, present, and future in and through situated action (Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013). For example, actors regularly draw on imaginaries of the distant future (Augustine et al., 2019) or memories of the past (Blagoev et al., 2018) to motivate actions in the present, and such a processual understanding of time provides opportunities for advancing routine dynamics research.
 
Similarly, recent temporal research increasingly stresses the enacted nature of time, but important conceptual shortcomings remain regarding key concepts such as temporal structuring and temporal work. Even though recent studies have explored the enactment of temporal coordination across organizational (Hilbolling et al., 2022) and occupational boundaries (e.g., Oborn & Barrett, 2021), these studies remain rooted in entitative conceptualizations of time as manifest in concepts such as temporal orientations or temporal conceptions (Rowell et al., 2017). With its focus on situated actions and consideration of patterning as effortful accomplishment (Feldman, 2016), research on routine dynamics could contribute to a more processual understanding of time enactment.
 
Overall, this sub-theme seeks to examine how the latest scholarly advances in temporal research offer novel insights into routine dynamics, and, conversely, how recent advances in routine dynamics shed new light on time and temporality in organizations. Suggested research questions and topics include, but are not limited to:
 
Routine Dynamics and Temporality:

• What is the role of time and temporality in the patterning and performing of routines?

• How can a temporal perspective enable advances in our understanding of ecologies, clusters, and networks of multiple routines?

 
Temporality and Organization Studies:

• How can routine dynamics research enhance our understanding of temporal structuring and temporal practices in and across organizations?

• In what ways and forms do routines matter when actors engage in temporal work? How might temporal work routines relate to and differ from other forms of routines?

 
Temporality and Contemporary Phenomena of Societal Concern:

• How do routines enable or inhibit actors, particularly those with diverse views and vantage points, in arriving at shared interpretations of past, present, and future actions and paths when facing multiple overlapping crises?

• How and in which forms can routines support organizations in balancing short-term and long-term orientations, e.g., in responding to climate crises?

 
Methods related to Temporality and Routine Dynamics:

• What opportunities are present for novel methodologies to help inform our understanding of temporality and routine dynamics?

• In what ways can historical methodologies shed new light on routine dynamics and temporality?

References

• Augustine, G., Soderstrom, S., Milner, D., & Weber, K. (2019): “Constructing a Distant Future: Imaginaries in Geoengineering.” Academy of Management Journal, 62 (6), 1930–1960.
• Blagoev, B., Felten, S., & Kahn, R. (2018): “The Career of a Catalogue: Organizational Memory, Materiality and the Dual Nature of the Past at the British Museum (1970–Today).” Organization Studies, 39 (12), 1757–1783.
• Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998): “What Is Agency?” American Journal of Sociology, 103 (4), 962–1023.
• Feldman, M. S. (2016): “Routines as Process: Past, Present, and Future.” In: J.A. Howard-Grenville, C. Rerup, A. Langley & H. Tsoukas (eds.): Organizational Routines: How They are Created, Maintained, and Changed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 23–46.
• Feldman, M.S., Pentland, B.T., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K., Rerup, C., & Seidl, D. (2021): “What Is Routine Dynamics?” In: M.S. Feldman, B.T. Pentland, L. D’Adderio, K. Dittrich, C. Rerup & D. Seidl (eds.): Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1–18.
• Geiger, D., Danner-Schröder, A., & Kremser, W. (2021): “Getting Ahead of Time—Performing Temporal Boundaries to Coordinate Routines under Temporal Uncertainty.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 66 (1), 220–265.
• Hernes, T. (2022): Organization and Time. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (2020): “Translating the Distant into the Present: How actors address distant past and future events through situated activity.” Organization Theory, 1 (1), 1–20.
• Hilbolling, S., Deken, F., Berends, H., & Tuertscher, P. (2022): “Process-based temporal coordination in multiparty collaboration for societal challenges.” Strategic Organization, 20 (1), 135–163.
• Kaplan, S., & Orlikowski, W.J. (2013): “Temporal Work in Strategy Making.” Organization Science, 24 (4), 965–995.
• Kremser, W., & Blagoev, B. (2021): “The Dynamics of Prioritizing: How Actors Temporally Pattern Complex Role–Routine Ecologies.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 66 (2), 339–379.
• McGrath, J.E., & Kelly, J.R. (1992): “Temporal Context and Temporal Patterning: Toward a Time-Centered Perspective for Social Psychology.” Time & Society, 1 (3), 399–420.
• Oborn, E., & Barrett, M. (2021): “Marching to Different Drum Beats: A Temporal Perspective on Coordinating Occupational Work.” Organization Science, 32 (2), 376–406.
• Orlikowski, W.J., & Yates, J. (2002): “It's about Time: Temporal Structuring in Organizations.” Organization Science, 13 (6), 684–700.
• Rowell, C., Gustafsson, R., & Clemente, M. (2016): “How Institutions Matter ‘In Time’: The Temporal Structures of Practices and Their Effects on Practice Reproduction.” In: J. Gehman, M. Lounsbury & R. Greenwood (eds.): How Institutions Matter. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 48A, Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing, 303–327.
• Turner, S. F., & Rindova, V. P. (2021): “Time, Temporality and History in Routine Dynamics.” In: M.S. Feldman, B.T. Pentland, L. D’Adderio, K. Dittrich, C. Rerup & D. Seidl (eds.): Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 266–276.
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