Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Temporary organizing is an important field of study in organization and management because of the increase of contexts characterized by temporary structures, which alter traditional organizational and work-related arrangements (Bakker et al., 2016; Geraldi et al., 2025). Temporary organizing is typically manifested in various temporary work arrangements in teams, which need to coordinate despite their lack of shared history and backgrounds (Bechky, 2006; Ebbers & Wijnberg, 2009). This poses various coordination and work-related challenges.

Temporary organizing involves explicit demarcations between past, present, and future (Burke & Morley, 2016). The reweaving of such pasts, presents, and futures, may unleash novelty, innovation and change (Stjerne et al., 2022). Such moments of interaction are at the heart of temporary organizing with the explicit intention to enable novel relationships, new encounters, learning, and knowledge development (Thiel & Grabher, 2024, Cacciatori & Prencipe, 2021).

We know that history and the past play a central role in all kinds of organizing contexts, including temporary organizing (March, 1996; Stjerne & Svejenova, 2016), where various role systems and routines are essential for enabling collaboration (Bechky, 2006; Valentine & Edmondson, 2015). However, we do not know what kinds of pasts and routines are most influential, how multiple versions of history can enable exploration and learning, yet also stifle coordination. We also do not know how different roles and routines contribute to this process, how they enable coordination and restrain collaboration, and in this respect, it is still unclear how pasts and, possibly, paths (Feuls et al., 2025) and routines are activated to envision certain routes for future explorations (Bresman, 2013).

It therefore seems essential to address the inner workings of teams to enhance our understanding of the experience and dynamics of temporary organizing, the struggles, and the solutions, including dilemmas associated with exploration and exploitation (Grabher, 2004; March, 1995). Indeed, the radical idea of temporary organizing is to establish organizations de novo – integrating people who often have limited experience of working together, offering opportunities to learn from strangers and explore new roles and routines in light of unique challenges (Meyerson et al., 1996). This process of exploring together with relative strangers has potential but also comes with a fundamental problem; it may lead people to explore new areas, but it may also stifle collaboration and make people reluctant to act due to fear of punishment or failure. For that reason, the presence of already existing structures on the level of organizations, networks, and fields (Starkey et al., 2000; Sydow & Windeler, 2020) as well as institutions more generally (Tukiainen & Granqvist, 2016; Söderlund & Sydow, 2019) is important to provide the stability and continuity necessary even for temporary organizations. 

This colloquium seeks to explore various team-related aspects of temporary organizing, including issues of shared history (Söderlund et al., 2025), role-based coordination (Bechky, 2006), psychological safety (Edmondson et al., 2001), team identity (Anzel, 2022), AI teaming (Schmutz et al., 2024), and swift trust (Meyerson et al., 1996). We explore the specific theories and concepts that are relevant to understanding the functioning and challenges of temporary teams and various forms of temporary team collaboration within and across organizations (Hernes, 2025; Maloney et al., 2016). We are interested in addressing both the enabling features of cooperation and coordination in diverse temporary team-based settings, as well as their problematic nature, specifically associated with diverging temporalities (Söderlund & Pemsel, 2022; Vaagaasar et al., 2020). We embark on the practices and processes that people make use of to engage in successful teamwork collaboration in contexts of temporary organizing, including the role of metaphors, interlanguage creation (Lenfle & Söderlund, 2019), boundary objects (Carlile, 2002), temporary spaces (Dionne & Carlile, 2024), and shared knowledge representations (Caccamo et al., 2023). We further give attention to the temporal dynamics inherent in these forms of collaboration, considering aspects of temporality, tensions, and identity work (Braun & Lampel, 2020; Harvey et al., 2023; Söderlund et al., 2025), thus connecting team-related processes to various aspects of temporality, temporal complexity, and temporal tensions in temporary organizing (Skade et al. 2020; Otto et al., 2024). We therefore acknowledge studies of individual-level matters, competence, problem-solving practices, etc., as well as different collective aspects involved, including teamwork and collaboration practices, trust, shared mental models that serve central purposes to enable successful temporary organizing.

Submissions may build on qualitative or quantitative data or may be conceptual in nature. Literature reviews are equally welcome. The inclusiveness of this sub-theme contributes to accomplishing the mission of the EGOS Standing Working (SWG) 13 on ‘temporary organizing’, which is to provide a platform for theoretically generative dialogues on the temporary aspects of organizing, and spur critical debates that may challenge current trends in the study of temporary organizing. Against this background, some, but certainly not all, of the questions that could be addressed within the scope of this sub-theme are:

• How do individuals or groups of members relate to temporary teams?
• How can we understand the temporal dynamics of temporary teams?
• How does the structuring of time in and through temporary teams give rise to and sustain creativity and novelty?
• What are the key temporal coordination mechanisms in and behind temporary teams?
• How do people and organizations learn from temporary teamwork collaboration?
• What are the power dynamics behind the temporalities of temporary organizing?
• How do actors involved in temporary organizing mobilize, reconstruct, and ‘make’ pasts and futures through, e.g., narratives, practices, and materialities?
• How do varying temporal depths (near vs. distant) of pasts and futures as well as varying temporal directions (e.g., us moving toward the future vs. the future moving toward us) (re)constructed in temporary organizing enable or constrain creativity and innovation?
• In what ways do the temporalities of more recent forms and practices of temporary organizing such as agile teams differ from established ways such as project work (if at all), and with what effect?

References

• Anzel, A. (2022): Regulating organizational identity in temporary organizations (Doctoral dissertation, University of Warwick).
• Bakker, R. M., DeFillippi, R. J., Schwab, A., & Sydow, J. (2016): "Temporary organizing: Promises, processes, problems." Organization Studies, 37 (12), 1703-1719.
• Bechky, B. (2006): "Gaffers, gofers, and grips: Role-based coordination in temporary organizations." Organization Science, 17 (1), 3-21.
• Braun, T., & Lampel, J. (2020): "Tensions and paradoxes in temporary organizing: Mapping the field." Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 67, 1-13.
• Bresman, H. (2013): "Changing routines: A process model of vicarious group learning in pharmaceutical R&D." Academy of Management Journal, 56 (1), 35–61, https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0725.
• Burke, C. M., & Morley, M. J. (2016): "On temporary organizations: A review, synthesis and research agenda." Human Relations, 69 (6), 1235-1258.
• Caccamo, M., Pittino, D. & Tell, F. (2023): "Boundary objects, knowledge integration, and innovation management: A systematic review of the literature." Technovation, 122, 102645.
• Carlile, P. (2002): "A pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries: Boundary objects in new product development." Organization Science, 13 (4), 442-455.
• Dionne, K.-E., & Carlile, P. R. (2024): "The pragmatic cycle of knowledge work: Unlocking cross-domain collaboration in open innovation spaces." Human Relations, 78 (2), 187-222.
• Ebbers, J. J., & Wijnberg, N. M. (2009): "Latent organizations in the film industry: Contracts, rewards and resources." Human Relations, 62 (7), 987-1009.
• Edmondson, A. C., Bohmer, R. M., & Pisano, G. P. (2001): "Disrupted routines: Team learning and new technology implementation in hospitals." Administrative Science Quarterly, 46 (4), 685–716, https://doi.org/10.2307/3094828.
• Feuls, M., Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (2025): "Putting distant futures into action: How actors sustain a course of action toward distant-future goals through path enactment." Academy of Management Journal, 68 (2), 297-325.
• Geraldi, J., Jacobsson, M., & Pemsel, S. (2025): "Thirty years of temporary organizations research: A field reconnecting with its soul." Scandinavian Journal of Management, 41(2), 101425.
• Grabher, G. (2004): "Temporary architectures of learning: Knowledge governance in project ecologies." Organization Studies, 25 (9), 1491-1514.
• Harvey, J-F., Cromwell, J., Johnson, K. J., & Edmondson, A. C. (2023): "The dynamics of team learning. Harmony and rhythm in teamwork arrangements for innovation." Administrative Science Quarterly, 68 (3), 601–647.
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• Lenfle, S., & Söderlund, J. (2019): "Large-scale innovative projects as temporary trading Zones: Toward an interlanguage theory." Organization Studies, 40 (11), 1713–1739, https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840618789201.
• Maloney, M., Bresman, H., Zellmer-Bruhn, M., & Beaver, G. (2016): "Contextualization and context theorizing in teams research: A look back and a path forward." Academy of Management Annals, 10 (1), 891-942.
• March, J. G. (1995): "The future, disposable organizations and the rigidities of imagination." Organization, 2 (4), 427-440.
• Meyerson, D., Weick, K. E., & Kramer, R. M. (1996): "Swift trust and temporary groups." In: R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (eds.): Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research. Sage, 166–195.
• Otto, B. D., Schuessler, E. S., Sydow, J., & Vogelgsang, L. (2024): "Finding creativity in predictability: seizing Kairos in Chronos through temporal work in complex innovation processes." Organization Science, 35 (5), 1795-1822.
• Schmutz, B., N. Outland, S. Kerstan, E. Georganta & A. Ulfert. (2024): "AI-teaming: Redefining collaboration in the digital era." Current Opinion in Psychology, 58, 101837.
• Skade, L., Stanske, S., Wenzel, M., & Koch, J. (2020): "Temporary organizing and acceleration: On the plurality of temporal structures in accelerators." Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 67, 105-125.
• Söderlund, J., & Sydow, J. (2019): "Projects and institutions: Towards understanding their mutual constitution and dynamics." International Journal of Project Management, 37 (2), 259-268.
• Söderlund, J., & Pemsel, S. (2022): "Changing times for digitalization: The multiple roles of temporal shifts in enabling organizational change." Human Relations, 75 (5), 871-902.
• Söderlund, J., Stjerne, I., & Zerjav, V. (2025): "An identity work theory of temporary organizations." Scandinavian Journal of Management, 41 (2), 101404.
• Starkey, K., Barnatt, C., & Tempest, S. (2000): "Beyond networks and hierarchies: Latent organizations in the UK television industry." Organization Science, 11 (3), 299-305.
• Stjerne, I. S., Wenzel, M., & Svejenova, S. (2022): "Commitment to grand challenges in fluid forms of organizing: The role of narratives’ temporality." Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 67, 139-160.
• Stjerne, I. S., & Svejenova, S. (2016): "Connecting temporary and permanent organizing: Tensions and boundary work in sequential film projects." Organization Studies, 37(12), 1771-1792.
• Sydow, J., & Windeler, A. (2020): "Temporary organizing and permanent contexts." Current Sociology, 68 (4), 480-498.
• Thiel, J., & Grabher, G. (2024): "Abolish, accept, apply: Coping with ignorance in project ecologies." Project Management Journal, 55 (2), 139-150.
• Tukiainen, S. & Granqvist, N. (2016): "Temporary organizing and institutional change." Organization Studies, 37 (12), 1819-1840.
• Vaagaasar, A., Hernes, L. T., & Dille, T. (2020): "The challenges of implementing temporal shifts in temporary organizations: Implications of a situated temporal view." Project Management Journal, 51 (4), 420-428.
• Valentine, M. & A. C. Edmondson (2015): "Team scaffolds: How mesolevel structures enable role-based coordination in temporary groups." Organization Science 26 (2), 405-422.
• Wenzel, M., Krämer, H., Koch, J., & Reckwitz, A. (2020): "Future and organization studies: On the rediscovery of a problematic temporal category in organizations." Organization Studies, 41 (10), 1441-1455.