Time perspectives in tightly coupled, exploitative organizations

Abstract

Organizations are rarely established for a fixed period. Organization is not tied to the life span of its constituents. The separation of ownership and management enables that the life of a company is not tied to that of its owner. Decision makers are expected to steer the organization not only during their tenure but beyond it. Time is an essential part of decision making. The fundamental task of managers is to connect the present state of the organization and the envisaged future. Temporality is embedded in actions. Expectation of something occurring in the future is connected to our present actions. The anticipation is what drives people and organizations. Organizational actors’ present actions are tied to the expectations of the future. In this study, I investigated how timetables and schedules are formed in organizations and how they influence organizational actors’ behavior. The stereotypical organization of the theory can be described as being hierarchical, project-oriented, large and tightly coupled. However, the framework helps illuminating the time-scales of other types of organizations. The idea is that there are two time frames in organizations. Standard time is the pervasive and dominating notion. It is used to orchestrate the complex entity of interrelated tasks. On the local, group level, actors see their work as event-trajectories. These trajectories originate from the local technical practices. Only the actors who are daily involved with particular problems and have experience, know how to translate the trajectories to the standard time reference. Naturally the individuals are able to communicate only a small portion of their experience. The ‘proper’ task rate at different levels is a structure made up of rules-of-thumb and individual past experiences. The organizational time-frames are the dialogue of these two time notions. If the schedules are too ambitious compared to the grass-roots trajectories, the timetables do not hold. If the time spans are loose, personnel start filling the available time with different activities.