Investigating how the Clock–Event Time Dialectic Shapes the Doing of Time in Organizational Change

Abstract

Enacting both clock and event time – ambitemporality – in organizational change is beneficial but contradictory. Prior research establishes that actors valuing the co-existence of both time conceptions enables ambitemporality in change. However, this is likely to be problematic in many organizations because clock time is hegemonic. Clock time not only exerts systemic influences, but its proponents also work to exclude event time perspectives from affecting change. So how does event time influence change in these contexts? I explore, in an ethnography of an organizational change, how the clock–event time dialectic shapes the doing of time in change. The study’s primary contribution is in showing that event time proponents gain power to influence change through two types of political action: uncertainty switching and plasticizing temporal boundaries. A secondary contribution demonstrates the specific features of conflict that enable ambitemporality to emerge despite power asymmetries existing between the contradictory time conceptions.

Keywords

ambitemporality clock time dialectics event time organizational change

Introduction

Organizational change and time are inextricably linked. Prior literature draws sharp contrasts between two particular temporal enactments and their influences on change. These are labelled ‘clock time’ and ‘event time’ (Jaques, 1982; Orlikowski & Yates, 2002; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). When clock time is done, change is seen as predictable, schedulable and constrained by calendar deadlines (Gersick, 1994; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015).¹ In contrast, change when event time is enacted is seen as unpredictable and emergent in nature and timings (Huy, 2001; Kunisch, Bartunek, Mueller, & Huy, 2017).

Clock and event time thus create contradictory demands for how change is to occur and the potential for ‘chronic conflict’ (Gersick, 1994, p. 42). Yet, clock and event time are also synergistic and change processes benefit from their joint enactment or ‘ambitemporality’ (Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). Accordingly, there is continued scholarly interest in how clock and event time can work together to influence change, with studies highlighting the importance of actors valuing their co-existence and interdependencies (Dougherty, Bertels, Chung, Dunne, & Kraemer, 2013; Gersick, 1994; Huy, 2001; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015).

However, there is much to suggest that, despite its importance, actors valuing the co-existence of clock and event time is problematic and perhaps unlikely in many organizations. In Western societies, clock time manifests as commonly held temporal assumptions and beliefs and exerts systemic influences over social action. Within organizations specifically, clock time has dominated since the emergence of industrial capitalism (Bluedorn & Denhardt, 1988; Jaques, 1982) and is perpetuated through periodic reporting requirements and calendar-driven planning. Indeed, in Western organizations ‘clock-time hegemony has tended to eclipse alternative conceptions’ (Reinecke & Ansari, 2015, p. 619). Furthermore, empirical studies show organizational change agents doing clock time and excluding contradictory event time perspectives from affecting the change they are seeking to implement (see Granqvist & Gustafsson 2016; McGivern et al., 2018). This raises the problem of how event time might be enacted in change – and how ambitemporality might arise – when clock time is hegemonic. To date, organizational research is yet to explore this puzzle.

I investigate this by drawing on dialectical perspectives on change. Dialectics studies recognize asymmetric distributions of power between contradictory elements and see actors as partisan, working to overcome the opposing element rather than accepting co-existence (Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2017). In contrast to prior literature, where the emphasis is on actors valuing the co-existence of both clock and event time, a dialectical perspective explains the possibilities for ambitemporality in organizational change in terms of the political struggle between actors with unequal power (e.g. clock time over event time). Analytically, the focus is on the political actions of actors who seek to change (e.g. event time proponents) or maintain (e.g. clock time proponents) the prevailing social order (Benson, 1977; Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). It thus offers rich potential to contribute to existing literature given that clock time dominates event time in many organizations.

I thus pose the following research question: How does the clock–event time dialectic shape the doing of time in organizational change? I investigate this question through an ethnography of a wholesale financial services company – InstoBank – as it transformed to a digital business during the early 2000s. Based on the findings I propose a process model of the clock–event time dialectic in organizational change, recognizing clock time’s hegemony. Through this I make two contributions to the literature on time and organizational change.

The primary contribution is to show how actors doing event time gain power to influence organizational change through two specific types of political action. The first is uncertainty switching. This involves event time proponents replacing those uncertainties that are seen to be managed through the existing change process with new ones both critical enough to suggest change alternatives and connected to events and activities that they control. The second is plasticizing temporal boundaries. Here event time proponents make ‘hard’ change deadlines affixed to the calendar more flexible so that event-contingent change alternatives can be seen as feasible.

A secondary contribution demonstrates the specific features of conflict that enable ambitemporality to emerge despite power asymmetries existing between the contradictory time conceptions. A popular view in change and time research is that conflict between clock and event time should be mitigated so both can influence change. In contrast, Reinecke and Ansari (2015) illustrate that conflict can generate ambitemporality. I build on this in showing that, when power asymmetries exist, conflict needs to be visible to influential organizational participants and sustained, while also enabling actors doing clock or event time to arrive at relatively equal positions of influence and power.

The paper is organized as follows. The next two sections discuss relevant literature on change and time and the dialectical perspective respectively. The fourth and fifth sections outline the research method and provide empirical data from the case study. The final section discusses and concludes the paper.

The Doing of Clock and Event Time in Organizational Change

Clock time and event time pose contrasting ontologies. Clock time is invariant and finite, capable of measurement in precise quantitative units, and progresses forward linearly (Bluedorn & Denhardt, 1988; Huy, 2001). Event time is the qualitative heterogenous experience of individuals and groups, constructed through the meaning assigned to particular events (Jaques, 1982; Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). When done during change these contrasting ontologies create contradictions in terms of whether change and its timings are predictable and schedulable to the clock or emergent and evolving through meaningful events (Reinecke & Ansari, 2015).

Recognizing that enacting both clock and event time during change is beneficial but contradictory, studies focus on how conflict might be avoided or attenuated. Gersick (1994) highlights a division of labour that facilitates actors enacting clock or event time in complementary ways, while Dougherty et al. (2013) suggest organizational designs that locate clock and event time understandings at different decision-making levels to avoid conflict. More recently, Reinecke and Ansari (2015) show that conflict can be generative in allowing actors engaged in opposing clock and event time conceptions to be reflexive about their temporal assumptions and, ultimately, recognize the interdependencies of their contradictory time enactments and goals.

However, there is much to suggest that contemporary organizational settings privilege clock time to the exclusion of event time. The idea of time as objective, linear and scarce is entrenched in Western society and many facets of organizational life (Bluedorn & Denhardt, 1988; Jaques, 1982). Multiple empirical accounts highlight the dominance of clock time in organizational environments generally and change contexts specifically (Slawinski & Bansal, 2012; Dougherty et al., 2013; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015; McGivern et al., 2018).

Furthermore, studies also show actors purposefully shaping temporal boundaries for change based on hard deadlines in the pursuit of their interests and to pre-empt the expression of alternative event time perspectives. McGivern et al. (2018) illustrate how consultants and managers in a health change project enacted a temporal orientation characteristic of clock time via a focus on deadlines and objective notions of time. Simultaneously they engaged in covert political actions to enable expedient temporal settlements when confronted by clinicians enacting a more open qualitative temporal orientation. Similarly, Granqvist and Gustafsson (2016) illustrate actors deliberately limiting time for change preparation by planning tight schedules and enacting time as scarce and linear to pre-empt resistance and create perceptions of irreversibility that further discouraged change opponents.² In both studies, constructing time as finite relative to ‘hard’ temporal boundaries linked to the calendar helped to exclude alternative doings of time.

Collectively, studies on temporality in organizations indicate the likelihood of clock time hegemony. Given this, actors recognizing value in the co-existence of clock and event time doings during change is problematic, and perhaps unlikely, in many organizations. It is thus important to understand how those enacting event time overcome power asymmetries vis-a-vis clock time proponents, and specifically how they achieve this through conflict. This will also inform us on how ambitemporality might arise given these conditions of asymmetry. Relevant prior research provides empirical insights into what organizational actors do to impose clock time enactments on others (see Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; McGivern et al., 2018) but not the opposite. A dialectical perspective, which sees conflict as an essential motor of change and development (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995), is particularly appropriate to address this lacuna.

A Dialectical Perspective

Influenced by scholars such as Hegel, Marx and Freud, a dialectical perspective seeks to explain the emergence, reproduction and transformation of social arrangements in terms of contradictions – oppositional elements that are interrelated (Langley & Sloan, 2012; Farjoun, 2017). It sees contradictions as interwoven throughout social arrangements. These contradictions may be in terms of goals, values, the interests of different constituencies, or more broadly in terms of aspects of social structure (Langley & Sloan, 2012). Importantly, it is not just the presence of contradictions but the dynamic interplay between the oppositional elements of contradictions that is central in a dialectical explanation of how change unfolds.

A dialectical perspective posits that one element of a contradiction – known as the ‘affirmation’ – initially dominates (Langley & Sloan, 2012; Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2017).³ Power that enables this domination can manifest systemically in the form of shared understandings, norms and beliefs that are taken-for-granted, thereby shaping social reality in subtle ways (Benson, 1977; Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2017). It can also manifest episodically, where actors engage in observable political actions to influence others (Fleming & Spicer, 2014; Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2017). However, the opposing element of the contradiction – labelled the ‘negation’ – will emerge in a pluralistic context. Proponents of the negation will themselves engage in political action to contest the affirmation, gain power and to bring about change in the status quo (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). Here mobilization of others is important as proponents of the negation contend with asymmetric distributions of power (Benson, 1977).

Benson (1977) labels the political actions of the negation as ‘praxis’, explaining that people ‘can become active agents reconstructing their own social relations’ (1977, p. 5). In response, affirmation proponents are likely to defend the dominant state they are affiliated with and engage in counter-actions of their own. Proponents of each element ‘have made material commitments to these assumptions. As a result, they are prone to resist rather than accept the contradictory element’ (Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2017, p. 326). Conflict and struggle thus ensue.

Dialectical studies see this conflict between affirmation and negation as possibly generating a transformation or a new social arrangement (Farjoun, 2017; Langley & Sloan, 2012). Importantly, transformation is not a predetermined outcome. Proponents of the affirmation may defeat their opposition while proponents of the negation may overthrow the status quo (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995; Hargrave & Van De Ven, 2017).

A dialectical perspective is thus appropriate to extend extant research on how actors do time in organizational change. It recognizes that one time conception (clock time) is likely to dominate and that any recognition of interdependencies between both clock and event time is likely to require conflict (Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2017). Following Benson (1977) and other scholars (see Langley & Sloan, 2012), I apply a dialectics perspective in this study to enable focus on the dynamic interactions between contradictory forces of affirmation and negation, with this possibly (but not inevitably) leading to a transformation of the existing social order.

Research Site and Methods

My engagement with the field initially explored the process and challenges of how organizations experience digital transformation. It was only through subsequent reflection on data and engagement with relevant literature on time that I began to focus on the contradiction posed by opposing time conceptions. In the sub-sections below I detail the empirical site, data collection, and analysis process.

Empirical site

The empirical site, InstoBank, is a large Australian wholesale financial services company with corporate organizations as customers. InstoBank, like most of its competitors, was seeking to use technology to effect major organizational change to digitize how it provided financial services and become an e-business. The focus for the case study is the digital change process within the financial markets (FM) department of InstoBank, which specialized in the rapid buying and selling of foreign exchange (FX). FX dealers were responsible for quoting exchange rates and selling currency amounts and other FX products to their customers. This process was to be digitally transformed through a project labelled ‘e-business FX’ (ebFX). As the first e-business initiative to be launched, ebFX was often cited in internal communications as the main example of InstoBank’s ‘transformation into an e-business’.

Data collection

The research commenced at the start of 2000 and ended in July 2001.⁴ Throughout this period, I had close access to the ebFX change team and utilized ethnographic techniques to collect a wide spectrum of data. This allowed rich access to the change process and the doing of time. Table 1 presents an overview of the data collection process.

Table 1.

Data collection overview.

Data source	Total number
Formal interviews	19 [total hours: 19]
Informal interviews	13 [total hours: 8.4]
Meetings/presentations attended	37 [total hours: 54.5]
Days of in-situ observation	39
Documents collected*	45

Includes group e-mails, minutes of meetings, internal papers, project documentation, market research and other presentations.

Of the 32 interviews conducted, 14 were members of the ebFX change team, five were with senior management of InstoBank and the remaining 13 were with ‘change stakeholders’ comprising both change recipients (FX dealers and managers) and functional specialists with an interest in influencing the change process towards particular ends. Within this latter group, two relevant change stakeholders comprised InstoBank’s operational risk manager and InstoBank’s head of customer research because I observed them to engage in significant contests with the ebFX change team over time and the change process.⁵ I conducted five and three interviews with these individuals respectively. Overall, interviews were either formal semi-structured (usually of one hour duration) or informal (usually of 35 to 45 minutes duration). Both focused on eliciting interviewee observations on the change process, how this was manifesting and why, and the actions and interactions in which they were engaged.

Attendance at ebFX meetings and observations of actors ‘in-situ’ comprised another major source of data. The majority of meetings attended involved regular ebFX change team meetings. Other meetings and presentations attended were between ebFX team members and others at InstoBank to discuss the ebFX change project. In addition, I was able to attend meetings between InstoBank’s operational risk manager and other risk specialists at its sister companies and between the head of customer research and her customer research team. In-situ observation enabled collection of data about the interactions within the ebFX team and between ebFX and others outside of both interview and meeting settings and also allowed for follow-up. Throughout, observations of events and interactions were maintained in detailed field notes.

In addition, I obtained documentation around the change process, along with general ebFX project documentation. The latter comprised business and technology requirements, project reports and updates, and internal memos, and allowed access to how change was being envisioned and realized over time. Overall, this approach enabled triangulation and access to ‘rich data’ connected to the sequence of events that comprised the change process studied (Langley, 1999).

Data analysis

I adopted an inductive approach comprising the generation of coded categories of data and gradual integration of theoretical concepts and empirical evidence in an iterative and dynamic manner (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2013; Van Maanen, Sørensen, & Mitchell, 2007). Initial open codes combined into first-order categories indicated temporal understandings influencing the change process. Subsequently I engaged with the organizational literature on time and the concepts of ‘clock time’ and ‘event time’ to make sense of the empirical data, using these initially as sensitizing devices (Blumer, 1954). Further reflection on the contradictory nature of different time enactments and their interactions through processes of conflict led me to explore the value of the dialectical perspective described earlier and, in particular, the notions of affirmation, negation, praxis (political actions of proponents of the negation), counter-praxis (responses by proponents of affirmation to praxis) and transformation.⁶ Finding these to hold sensemaking potential, I re-engaged with the data to develop conceptual second-order themes, as well as to aggregate these into broader dimensions that reflected both time-related and dialectical theoretical concepts. The emergent data structure is provided in Table 2, with Table 3 providing empirical illustrations for the second order themes identified.

Table 2.

Coding structure.

First-order categories	Second-order themes	Aggregate dimensions
• Calendar deadline shapes thinking about change • Adapting ebFX change to meet October launch date	Objective time shapes planning	Enacting clock time during change: affirmation
• Speeding up learning about elements of the ebFX change context • Dropping direct research activities because of the deadline	Calendar constrained learning
• Measuring ebFX change progress against deadlines • Exhibiting concerns about calendar time delays in change process	Clock-based milestones define progress
• Exploring the risks of ebFX shapes understandings about the ebFX change and how long it takes • Exploring how customers may interact with ebFX shapes understandings about the ebFX change and how long it takes • Concerns about whether the change is ‘right’ shapes understandings about its timings	Change experiences shape subjective time	Enacting event time during change: negation
• Taking time to learn about elements of the ebFX change context • Preferring direct research activities for better learning	Calendar unconstrained learning
• Evaluating ebFX change progress in terms of learning about customer, employee, systems and other risks • Evaluating ebFX change progress in terms of learning about customers • Exhibiting concerns about non-integration of learnings into change process	Event-based learning defines progress
• Making claims that e-business is risky • Making claims that customers want a different form of e-business • Arguing that ebFX should be paused to learn more • Arguing that ebFX should be adapted given learnings	Problematizing the change	Praxis
• Connecting to others within the organization • Connecting to others outside the organization	Mobilizing allies and resources
• Aligning problematization activities to the change team’s calendar to influence decision-making • Accelerating resource mobilization to support change alteration before October deadline	Harnessing clock time to enable change alteration
• Reminding others that a quick ebFX change enables customer retention • Arguing that new activities threaten the October deadline	Reinforcing the calendar	Counter praxis
• Claiming that customers are unreliable • Claiming that risks are already known and managed	Disputing problematizations
• Arguing that future meaningful events need to occur to determine how the change may need to be altered and the scheduling of required alteration activities • Arguing that completing ebFX change is necessary for informing if, when and how problematic elements of change context might need to be addressed	Harnessing event time to delay change alteration
• e-business change expands to include portfolio of multi-contributor portals and ebFX • ebFX change continues with fundamental alterations	Reconceiving the change	Transformation (of existing arrangements)

Table 3.

Representative empirical data.

Aggregate dimension	Enacting clock time: affirmation			Enacting event time: negation
Second-order themes	Objective time shapes planning	Calendar constrained learning	Clock-based milestones define progress	Change experiences shape subjective time	Calendar unconstrained learning	Event-based learning defines progress
Empirical illustration	‘Rather than decide on the functionality we want and then see how long it will take to provide that, we see how much we can do by the deadline’. John, ebFX manager	‘Meeting schedule requires us to expedite certain tasks. We will replace the customer research programme with functionality prioritization meetings held with FX dealers’ ebFX internal project memo	‘The security module has caused a severe impact and resulted in the loss of 6½ days of testing time to date’. ebFX Status Update to Steering Committee	‘How can you launch something in October that is going to provide customers a direct pipe into our systems without knowing what this could really mean?’ Diane, operational risk manager	‘I’m sick of e-business being described as defensive always, and that there’s no time.’. Gina, Head of Customer Research	‘I’ve told Fred [ebFX Project Owner] that once we’ve finalized it [risk template], I’ll send it to him. I also want the ebFX team to develop an action plan and implement it.’ Diane, operational risk manager

Aggregate dimension	Praxis			Counter praxis			Transformation (of existing arrangements)
Second-order themes	Problematizing the change	Mobilizing allies and resources	Harnessing clock time to enable change alteration	Reinforcing the calendar	Disputing problematizations	Harnessing event time to delay change alteration	Reconceiving the change
Empirical illustration	‘We didn’t have any customer say ebFX is the best thing since sliced bread’. Wayne, head of corporate FX dealers	‘Customers don’t want a single-firm capability. They want a third party portal . . . We’ve interviewed about 20 corporates, and these are high-end corporates mind you’. Gina, head of customer research	‘They are making final decisions about how the technology will interface with customers in the July SteerCo. We need to be there presenting the research showing how much customers value their dealer relationship.’ Gina, head of customer research	‘Some would argue that ‘Let’s spend some time, check out what the risks are and what customers want and get it right’. But I’d argue that every day we don’t have something [e-business capability], the other financial service providers move away from us’. Fred, ebFX project owner	‘It’s a bit naive to ask customers what they want. They aren’t aware of all the e-business possibilities.’ Fred, ebFX project owner	‘You’ve just got to get out there with ebFX, listen to what your customers say and make changes over time . . . adjust as you go along’. John, ebFX manager	‘We are adopting a portfolio approach. ebFX will allow us to deliver value to our mid-market customer base while our participation in [specific FX multi-contributor portal] will enable us to demonstrate our capability in e-business to high-value FX corporate customers’. InstoBank head of FM

Iterating between data and theory, I observed that first-order categories revealed organizational actors enacting clock and event time. As in prior studies, these enactments varied in terms of time being understood as objective and independent of human experience versus time as subjective perception shaped through experience of events and processes (see Slawinski & Bansal, 2012; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015), learning being constrained by the calendar because time is scarce versus being unconstrained by the calendar because time is sufficient (see Dougherty et al., 2013; McGivern et al., 2018), and progress being measured in relation to clock-based milestones or whether learnings from meaningful events were being acted upon in terms of the timings of new and pre-existing activities (see Dougherty et al., 2013; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). Consequently, I aggregated these into dimensions of clock and event time enactments respectively. From a dialectical perspective I label clock time ‘affirmation’ and event time ‘negation’ because clock time understandings dominated the early to middle phases of the ebFX change process.

Data also revealed change stakeholders engaging in purposive actions to gain influence and alter the direction and timings of the ebFX change process and the ebFX change team responding to these with their own political action. As Table 2 indicates, I use descriptive labels as second-order themes for these actions and, in keeping with a dialectical perspective, aggregate them into dimensions of praxis and counter-praxis respectively.

Finally, late in the case study, I observed actions taken by InstoBank’s senior management to reshape how the organization was attempting to change into an e-business in the FX domain. This approach incorporated understandings of both clock and event time yet appeared to be quite different from a compromise between these oppositional approaches. Drawing on dialectics, I label this ‘reconceiving the change’ and see this as indicative of a ‘transformation’ of existing social arrangements.

E-business Change and the ebFX Change Project

In the early 2000s, organizations across the financial services industry were preoccupied with the Internet and how it might create e-business opportunities and threats. At InstoBank, senior management in the FM department were concerned about the prospect of customers switching to competitors with an e-business capability. In late February 2000, InstoBank’s senior management formally commenced the process of changing into an e-business by approving an ‘ebFX change project’ as its first major e-business initiative. This would digitally transform how FX services would be delivered to InstoBank’s customers. Specifically, they would be able to trade FX at any time via the Internet compared to calling InstoBank’s FX desk and interacting with its FX dealers within the FM department.

Concerns about time as finite and scarce manifested in the approving of ebFX. The head of FM wanted ebFX to be launched as early as practicable to evidence to the market InstoBank’s new technological capabilities. The project was approved on the basis that the new capability had to be launched by October, that is, it had to be achieved in a nine-month calendar period.

A ‘project owner’ – the head of FX (Fred) – and an ebFX change project manager (John) were selected and a change team established. The change team was to report periodically to an ebFX steering committee, which comprised the head of FM, representatives from InstoBank senior management such as the head of e-business, and the project owner Fred. Against this backdrop actors enacted time in different ways, shaping how the e-business change was to occur.

ebFX change team enact clock time

From the outset, concerns among the change team about the October deadline and the clock ticking down appeared to be paramount. The expectations of InstoBank senior management and the head of FM, in particular, made clock time particularly salient, as explained by the ebFX deputy project manager:

The steering committee was aggressive in pushing for the October date. . . I think deep in his heart John [project manager] knew that the date was too aggressive.

Accordingly, the change team developed detailed plans and schedules to enable completion by October.

Given the novelty of e-business at the time to the industry and the organization, the ebFX team had significant discretion in determining which customer segments to target and which capabilities and technologies to offer. They had to learn about elements of the change context and here again concerns about the clock ticking was a constraint. For example, one month had been timetabled early in the project to conduct customer research. However, after calculating the time needed for this, the ebFX change team adapted their plans so as not to jeopardize the October deadline, instead developing customer requirements by interacting with the FX dealers providing FX services to InstoBank’s clients, rather than directly with customers.

The measurement of progress also focused on time and, in particular, the lapsing of time and concerns about missing the deadline. Weekly ebFX team meetings mostly focused on measuring project task completion against estimated time to complete and then against available time to the October deadline. ‘Highlights’ in steering committee reports often commented on ‘milestones completed, milestones missed, and potential October “show stoppers”’ (ebFX steering committee update).

Thus, the ebFX change team enacted clock time in multiple ways, with this conception of time as objective and finite shaping the nature and timing of change, constraining learning about elements of the change context and shaping understandings of progress. However, they were soon to encounter others at InstoBank seeking to influence the e-business change process through alternative doings of time.

Stakeholders concerned about risks enact event time

InstoBank’s operational risk manager (Diane) was one change stakeholder who sought to influence the ebFX change project. Diane was concerned with mitigating risks before they materialized. However, change projects at InstoBank had historically been outside Diane’s formal advisory remit. Oversight of risk was left to the head of the respective division that acted as project sponsor and the particular project steering committee. While Diane could make risk management recommendations, she could not require implementation. As such, she reached out to Fred and John as ebFX project owner and manager respectively, to obtain information about their risk management approach. John provided detail on the high probability and high impact risks that were being actively mitigated by the change team. These reproduced clock time in casting risks as related to the October deadline with time being finite and scarce:

Technology risk – impact: deadline slippage; timeframe to complete – impact: inadequate solution delivered; internal bureaucracy – impact: deadline slippage

Considering this insufficient, Diane requested a workshop with the change team to identify all possible risks associated with ebFX, identify change activities that increased risk levels and whether these needed to be rescheduled, consider any new activities that could mitigate risk and agree to timings for when these would be commenced and completed. For Diane, thinking about timings for risk mitigation activities needed to change and evolve as the broader environment also changed. In seeking the workshop she posed questions to the ebFX team:

Your risk matrix is okay. But are there other risks that could require a change to project activities? We need to think about when any new risk mitigation commences. Also, how are we being dynamic so we can adapt our risk mitigation as required?

Diane thus enacted elements of event time: temporal understandings about when project and risk mitigation activities should start and end was more subjective and possibly evolving, shaped by meaningful events that contributed to how actors viewed risk and how best they could be reduced. Furthermore, learnings about risk were unconstrained by the October deadline.

Despite Diane’s requests, and without the need for her formal approval, the ebFX team pressed on with the change process. Diane then engaged in specific actions to enhance her influence over the ebFX change process. She reached out to potential ‘risk allies’ comprising risk specialists at InstoBank’s sister companies that had already implemented e-business change projects, seeking advice on the negative impacts they may have experienced. For these specialists, e-business risks were still largely unknown and their advice was ambiguous:

There are really two views in relation to risk and e-business. E-business is no change and just a new delivery channel, or it’s a quantum of new risks. We haven’t decided. (e-business risk specialist at sister company)

Without any established ‘InstoBank approach’ to e-business risks, Diane commenced a review of available literature on e-business in the financial services industry, comprising regulator guidelines and industry reports, consultant material and management articles. Through this process she developed an ‘E-Business Operational Risk Template’ identifying over 30 different risks that she considered relevant to the ebFX change project. These ranged from loss of InstoBank reputation due to potential customer and employee misuse through to an inability to keep pace with rapid change in technology.

Armed with this template, Diane changed her approach. Rather than a more open risk identification workshop, she required the ebFX team to respond to her problematizations of the change by rating the pre-identified risks and identifying mitigation actions. Temporal understandings were to be shaped through this process because ‘high risk’ change activities were to be considered for rescheduling while risk mitigation activities were to be identified along with their start and end dates.

The ebFX change team contested Diane’s concerns by disputing her problematizations, highlighting the ‘generic nature’ of the risk template and how it was not specific to either InstoBank or the ebFX context. At the same time the ebFX team sought to delay the possibility that they may need to alter their vision of the change process by having to reschedule ‘high risk’ activities and schedule additional risk mitigation activities. In so doing they engaged in actions that enacted event time conceptions. Specifically, they proposed that the timing of risk mitigation activities could not be determined through reference to a calendar and scheduled in advance of testing of ebFX and completing the change. The following response by the ebFX change team in a meeting with Diane is illustrative:

We’ll only really know what some of the issues are with customers and our people once we have it working and in front of them, and then we can iterate and adapt. (John)

Completion of the risk template was meaningful in Diane’s enactment of event time because actual ratings of risks and their impacts would inform timings of project and risk mitigation activities. However, she was unable to respond to disputes that these risks were specific enough. The ebFX team also harnessed event time in delaying a possible alteration of change, claiming that the timing of project and risk mitigation activities would emerge from meaningful events that were likely to occur after change completion. Accordingly they resisted completing her risk template. Diane was thus unable to translate her problematization into alteration of the ebFX change.

Stakeholders concerned about customers enact event time

Gina, the head of customer research at InstoBank, was another stakeholder who enacted event time as she sought to influence the ebFX change project. Gina saw her role as helping InstoBank become more customer oriented. However, Gina, like Diane, lacked formal authority in the ebFX change process. She was not part of senior management or the ebFX steering committee.

Unlike Diane, however, Gina sought to mobilize allies prior to interacting directly with the ebFX change team. Through her broader customer research work she had been discussing a series of FX customer visits with Wayne, the head of corporate FX dealers and Fred’s direct report. Wayne had indicated concerns about ebFX and whether customers would want to speak to their FX dealers when transacting rather than engage in the automated capability of ebFX:

We are going down the e-business path on the basis that everyone wants to do it, but what we may find is that the customer may hate it. They may want the flavour of the market, the spontaneity of the dealer, the vibe.

Accordingly, Gina and Wayne shared an interest in asking customers about e-business and the nature of the changes that ebFX was to bring about. They conducted 20 interviews with FM customers, investigating their e-business needs. Based on this they argued customers would not adopt ebFX, instead preferring to retain their relationship with FX dealers. Furthermore, they would only use digital services if they could compare prices across multiple banks through multi-contributor portals. Gina began to disseminate interview findings to InstoBank’s senior management and the ebFX change team in presentation-styled documents with titles such as ‘What are our customers saying about e-business?’ These contained extracts such as the following:

If you are not currently using E-business, do you expect to be doing so in two years’ time? Yes, but don’t want a single-provider technology. No ability to get a competitive price. For the big deals where a lot of money is involved would want the personalized contact.

Mobilizing the views of the 20 customers as support, Wayne and Gina sought to problematize elements of the ebFX change. Customer preferences to retain their FX dealer relationship as well as access prices from multiple service providers called into question the ebFX change process that envisioned customers trading digitally via a single provider’s (InstoBank’s) system for the bulk of their FX needs with dealers only performing complex transactions.

The struggle between differing understandings of change and time came to a head in a late April meeting attended by the ebFX team and FX dealers to finalize the capabilities that ebFX would offer. Wayne and Gina both attended, problematizing the customer aspects of the change context. They also referred to their allies, the 20 customers they had interviewed. The ebFX change team countered. First, they disputed Gina’s and Wayne’s problematization of the change context. Fred argued that customers did not understand e-business. The following exchange with Fred, the ebFX project owner, occurred:

Wayne:

We’ve done 20 customer visits. They’re not interested in one bank’s system. They want three [provider’s] prices.

Fred:

We’re asking customers to give us their feedback on what they want in the future, based on what their current experience is. We can’t take the customer research because it’s wrong. Otherwise [our competitors] would not be having their reasonable take-up.

In the same meeting, Gina again proposed taking more time to understand customers and delaying ebFX, although she could not specify for how long. Fred again disputed the problematization of customers, arguing that insufficient customers were surveyed to represent ebFX’s customer base. He also sought to reinforce the calendar imperative, arguing that further learning activities would compromise the October deadline:

We’ve done some customer research, probably not enough. But we can’t take 2–3 months to do a piece of research. Just 20 customers saying they won’t use it [ebFX] does not mean our entire customer base will totally ignore it.

At this meeting the change team decided that ebFX change activities as currently scheduled would proceed without alteration. Their counter-praxis rendered Gina unable to gain sufficient influence. She commented unhappily immediately afterwards:

The management of the e-business projects keep saying its defensive and there’s no time for customer research.

Clock time had again prevailed over event time. However, Gina had not given up.

Stakeholders concerned about customers expand their praxis

Throughout the next three months Gina conducted additional customer research surveys as part of her customer research mandate at InstoBank. These additional research pieces were used to highlight the importance of human-to-human relationships between customers and InstoBank personnel and the latter understanding the former’s priorities and needs. Gina argued that these would be threatened through digital technologies such as ebFX. In this way she mobilized additional resources to support her problematization of the ebFX change context and respond to disputations.

Gina also began to engage in a different way to gain influence in the ebFX process. Specifically, she harnessed elements of clock time to influence ebFX decision making. She obtained information about key decision points relating to how ebFX would operate with customers and their timings on the ebFX project calendar. With this information she undertook research activities to enable her to be able to circulate findings to the ebFX steering committee in advance of these decision points so that she might be asked to present at its meetings. Thus, to gain influence, Gina began to embrace objective and scarce notions of time and calendar deadlines as already defined by the ebFX change team.

In July Gina obtained an important additional resource to support her problematization. Market research consultants that were suppliers to Gina had conducted a survey of 500 large corporate organizations that actively traded FX and shared this with her. This research indicated that the majority of large customers preferred multi-contributor portals for their e-business requirements. Aware of upcoming e-business and ebFX steering committee meetings, Gina immediately mobilized this new resource, distributing the market research to InstoBank senior management and the ebFX change team, to support her previous problematizations of the ebFX change context:

Many of these market research findings are highly consistent with what our interviewed customers have been telling Wayne and I. [emphasis in original]

Subsequently, Gina was asked to present this research, together with insights from her various customer research activities, to InstoBank senior management and FM management. Gina consistently argued for the need to alter the ebFX change project in light of her customer research. Now the ebFX change team softened their opposition to change context problematization, but still sought to reinforce the calendar imperative as the following meeting interchange indicates:

Gina:

It’s now clear that customers want two things in relation to e-business, multi-contributor portals and contact with their dealer.

Fred:

The research is interesting . . . But we have always said we need to get something out there quickly. Showing customers we are an e-business is important.

In these meetings Gina continued to harness objective notions of clock time and her understandings of activities geared to the October deadline in seeking alteration of e-business change. With senior management showing interest in Gina’s arguments, the ebFX team now engaged in actions similar to those employed earlier with Diane, namely the harnessing of event time to delay change alteration:

Gina:

Customers want their dealer relationship. And, decisions about how the technology will work with dealers are still to finalised by the SteerCo [steering committee] as I understand it. So we can still change.

Head of FM:

That’s true. Maybe we should look at this and the portal issue as well.

John:

I think we should just get it [ebFX] out there and refine it over time. Customers may be surprised with what ebFX can do. We won’t really know until customers are using it.

The continued contest between Gina and the ebFX team had thus expanded in terms of political actions to gain or maintain influence. Gina’s actions to gain influence during this period moved beyond problematization and mobilization of resources to also include the harnessing of clock time in advocating alteration of change. In response, the ebFX change team continued to reinforce the calendar imperative but also harnessed event time to delay change alteration. From these conditions a transformation in how e-business change was to occur at InstoBank emerged.

A ‘transformation’ to the e-business change process

Subsequent to the e-business offsites, senior management became less constrained by calendar deadlines as they sought to pause and clarify learnings about customers. More open-ended and subjective event time understandings began to manifest at senior levels of the organization. InstoBank’s senior management began to explore opportunities to join multi-contributor portals, with the head of FM taking the lead in relation to initiatives connected to FX. In a meeting with Fred, John and the ebFX change team, the head of FM described a potential alteration of the e-business change that they were seeking, shifting away from the October deadline-focused change and towards a more open agenda in terms of the nature and timing of change. He reflected on senior management’s explorations:

It’s interesting what the next step is. Is it ‘do you want to combine in a multi-contributor portal?’ I don’t know. . .And don’t ask me about timings!

Soon after, senior management formed a new change team to commence exploring how customers would use portals and what the implications would be in terms of customer retention as well as margins. This team would also search for opportunities for InstoBank to join multi-contributor portals for the digital provision of FX services. Learning about possibilities rather than meeting calendar deadlines began to shape e-business change activities.

However, ebFX was not abandoned. There were alterations to the change process so that larger customers could retain their dealer relationships while ebFX would be for smaller, lower value customers. Maintaining calendar time pressure on the ebFX change project, both ebFX and multi-contributor portal teams were asked by the head of FM and other members of InstoBank’s senior management to explore opportunities to leverage ebFX as important technological infrastructure that could serve as the interface between a multi-contributor Internet site and InstoBank’s systems. Important interdependencies between both streams of e-business change activity were envisioned.

A launch of ebFX eventually took place a few months after its October deadline, due primarily to delays with its technological components. Towards the end of the data collection period, InstoBank publicly announced its intent to join a multi-contributor portal for the provision of digital FX services and began work with specific competitors to enter into joint venture agreements. A reconceiving of previously envisioned change and transformation had commenced in how InstoBank was becoming an e-business.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this study I investigate how the enactment of time shapes organizational change. Prior research emphasizes that ambitemporality – the enactment of both clock and event time – is beneficial for change, but that this requires actors to accept the co-existence and interdependencies of these contradictory time conceptions (Dougherty et al., 2013; Gersick, 1994; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). Yet in many organizations this is likely to be difficult and perhaps unlikely. Given the dominant role of clock time in Western society, actors are likely to enact it routinely and unproblematically. Temporal structures in organizations also reproduce it as taken-for-granted reality (Bluedorn & Denhardt, 1988; Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). Furthermore, actors such as change agents who enact clock time often exclude alternative temporal enactments that threaten the change they are seeking to implement (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; McGivern et al., 2018). How then does event time influence organizational change and how might ambitemporality emerge?

I was motivated by this puzzle, applying a dialectical perspective to examine how the clock–event time dialectic shapes the doing of time in organizational change. The InstoBank case study reveals the political struggles between actors seeking to either change or maintain clock time’s dominance in change processes, the unequal distributions of power between them, and how this asymmetry shifted over time. Based on this I first propose a process model of the clock–event time dialectic in organizational change, recognizing clock time’s hegemony. I then discuss the study’s primary contribution to prior literature, specifically, how actors doing event time gain power to influence organizational change. This is followed by a secondary contribution, which focuses on the particular features of conflict that allow ambitemporality to emerge despite power asymmetries existing between the contradictory time conceptions.

A process model of the clock-event time dialectic

The results of the InstoBank case study reveal commonalities in how actors doing event time sought to influence change (Diane and Gina initially) as well as differences (Diane and Gina initially versus Gina later). Abstracting from these patterns, I propose a process model of the clock–event time dialectic in organizational change when clock time is hegemonic. This is presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Process model of the clock–event time dialectic in change (recognizing clock time hegemony).

A dialectical perspective encourages consideration of how meaning structures might constrain social action and create power asymmetries without simultaneously discounting the agency of actors (Benson, 1977). Applied to the study of temporal understandings, I depict visually the systemic power that clock time exerts over social action throughout all stages of the model. I also show the agency of actors in doing time and engaging in political action to gain/maintain power and influence change.

The model illustrates clock time as affirmation (see Figure 1, panel 1), where clock time understandings exert systemic influences while actors also enact clock time (over any event-based uncertainties) in shaping change. In the InstoBank case study, this comprised senior management and the project team envisioning e-business change with predestined outcomes and timings, with the process of change planned and scheduled to a fixed calendar deadline. Consequently, Figure 1 illustrates clock-based change being completed within relatively ‘hard’ temporal boundaries (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016).

Figure 1, panel 2A shows how this affirmation of clock time invites a negation of event time in conflict over change uncertainties. It illustrates how actors doing event time problematize the envisioned change and the predictability of its outcomes and timings, performing an alternative, more emergent version that is contingent on events meaningful to them. The praxis of Diane and Gina both illustrate this, triggering counter-praxis from the ebFX team who disputed these problematizations. Event-contingent change is depicted as crossing temporal boundaries because the empirical data reveals how, at this stage, the ebFX project team effectively engaged in counter-praxis to construct change alternatives as outside calendar-affixed deadlines and not feasible. Considering the nature and purpose of this conflict, I label the political actions of the negation and affirmation ‘praxis A’ and ‘counter-praxis A’ (see legend to Figure 1) and expand on these in the next section.

As evidence accumulates suggesting that the envisioned change and its associated outcomes may be less certain, and that alternative conceptions may be more advantageous, conflict between the affirmation and negation can expand to incorporate struggles over temporal boundaries (see panel 2B). Here actors doing event time, such as Gina in the latter part of the case study, focus on constructing event-contingent conceptions of change and their timings as feasible to pursue, even if the time for change is limited. The counter-praxis of clock time proponents focuses on maintaining the hardness of temporal boundaries, emphasizing that time is insufficient and meaningful events occur too late. If they are able to withstand this, event time proponents create possibilities to alter change activities, decisions and timings where previously these did not exist. Temporal boundaries become more flexible with this shift and, accordingly, are now represented as a dashed curve. I label the political actions of the negation and affirmation in this conflict ‘praxis B’ and ‘counter-praxis B’ (see legend to Figure 1), discussing these in the next section.

Contingent on the preceding conflicts, reconceived change and transformations of existing social arrangements may occur where both clock and event time shape the nature and timings of change (see panel 3). Here, organizational actors grapple with new emergent meanings from relevant events while exploring the possible retention and adaptation of elements of the previously envisioned clock-based change. Specific temporal boundaries for change are also in flux during this phase of the dialectic process, as exemplified when actors at InstoBank began to reconceive its e-business change to also include multi-contributor portals, but was searching for what this meant and how it would be timed.

How event time proponents gain power through political action to influence change

The process model of the clock–event time dialectic reveals that event time proponents have to engage in two different types of political actions if they are going to negate clock time’s dominance in change. The first, as indicated in panel 2A in Figure 1 is ‘uncertainty switching’ (praxis A). The second, illustrated in panel 2B, is ‘plasticizing temporal boundaries’ (praxis B). I expand on each of these below.

Uncertainty switching

Actors gain power over others when they can portray themselves as managing important uncertainties (Fleming & Spicer, 2014). When actors do clock time in change they enact change as predictable and controllable, thereby leading to a more certain future (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). They thus portray themselves – whether intentionally or otherwise – as managing important uncertainties on behalf of the organization. Prior studies acknowledge this but do not examine how event time proponents might respond. I show that ‘uncertainty switching’ is an important political action in which event time proponents engage to address this asymmetry.

As the case study reveals, actors doing event time do not directly engage in contests over calendar deadlines and the possible need to take more time to consider emergent learnings. Instead they seek first to replace those uncertainties that the envisioned change is seen as reducing with new uncertainties both critical for the organization to manage and tied to events they are interested in. At InstoBank, the uncertainty that the ebFX project team sought to reduce was the possible loss of customers due to the lack of any e-business capability, with the ebFX change the solution conceived to manage this uncertainty. Diane sought to replace this uncertainty with a myriad of others – connected to employee and customer misuse, reputation damage and rapid technological change. Likewise, Gina sought to replace the uncertainty about losing customers due to a lack of any e-business capability with uncertainty about losing customers because the right type of e-business capability and human interaction may not be provided. Both sought to switch the uncertainties that InstoBank should be addressing through e-business change to areas for which they were responsible, simultaneously reducing the power of the ebFX change team and increasing their own.

The praxis of those enacting event time when focused on uncertainty switching manifests in problematizations of the change context, with allies mobilized to enhance the credibility of these problematizations. However, actors doing event time invariably face counter-praxis comprising disputes about their problematizations from clock time proponents. Counter-praxis also encompasses actions to depict emergent change alternatives as located outside of hard temporal boundaries for change, thereby pre-empting them from being seen as feasible. The first struggle that event time actors need to win is to replace those uncertainties that the existing change process is seen as addressing with new ones both critical enough to suggest change alternatives and connected to events and activities that they control.

Plasticizing temporal boundaries

Producing new change uncertainties and switching from previously envisioned ones is necessary but not sufficient for actors doing event time to influence change. When clock time dominates, temporal boundaries for important change activities and decisions have already been defined through calendar-affixed deadlines (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016). Thus, event time proponents face a second challenge. Their proposed event-contingent change alternative may be perceived as unfeasible because dominant understandings see time as finite with change needing to be delivered by a calendar-affixed deadline (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; McGivern et al., 2018). Thus, the second type of political action in which event time proponents need to engage is plasticizing temporal boundaries. This involves constructing change boundaries as flexible enough so that proposed alterations to change decisions, activities and timings are viewed as possible against change deadlines.

This is where the actions of Gina in the latter part of the case study are particularly insightful. She expanded her praxis to encompass a harnessing of clock time, drawing on its systemic influences to locate her proposed alteration actions as within the deadlines for the e-business project. Here Gina drew upon objective understandings of time that had already been produced by the ebFX change team to both schedule her mobilization of resources and argue that sufficient time existed for decisions to be altered in ways consistent with her emergent customer learnings.

Actors doing clock time counter this plasticizing by seeking to reinforce the hardness of calendar deadlines and locate meaningful events that inform alterations as outside the temporal boundary for change. This is to preserve the change they had envisioned. In the case study, the ebFX team enacted clock time in reinforcing the imperative to deliver the change they had envisioned by the October deadline. They simultaneously harnessed event time in arguing that alteration of their envisioned change could not be decided now but was better done at some later date after the current change process was completed. In these ways they sought to maintain the hardness of temporal boundaries and thus prevent their envisioned change from being altered. Event time proponents need to withstand this counter-praxis in order to render ‘hard’ temporal boundaries more flexible, in turn allowing emergent alteration of change activities and timings to appear feasible against the now softer deadlines.

In summary, by paying attention to the clock–event time dialectic and iterative praxis of the negation and counter-praxis of the affirmation, I show that event time actors have to engage in political actions aimed at uncertainty switching and plasticizing temporal boundaries if they are to gain power and influence change when clock time is hegemonic. This extends prior literature that shows how actors doing clock time draw upon shared understandings about calendar deadlines and the scarcity of objective time to impose their enactments of time on others (see Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; McGivern et al., 2018), but does not explore how actors doing event time affect change in the face of dominant clock time understandings.

The ways that conflict enables ambitemporality to emerge from power asymmetry

Early studies examining how both clock and event time might be done in change emphasized the avoidance or minimization of conflict on the basis that this can severely impede change outcomes (Dougherty et al., 2013; Gersick, 1994; Huy, 2001). Such thinking also permeates current research through calls for further study on how organizations can ‘hold multiple sides of temporal differences as opposed to casting one against the other’ (Kunisch et al., 2017, p. 1049) and ‘alleviate tensions’ (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016, p. 1032).

A more recent study, however, found conflict between contradictory time conceptions to be important because it enabled actors to be reflexive about their temporal assumptions and come to value the co-existence of both (Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). As Reinecke and Ansari note (2015, p. 638), ‘While conflict can lead to deadlocks, what we found to be revelatory was how conflict can be generative [for ambitemporality].’ I add to this by showing the specific ways that conflict should manifest when power asymmetries exist between different time conceptions if ambitemporality is to emerge. While these are based on the InstoBank case study where clock time dominated, I argue that the insights are also applicable to contexts where event time holds sway.

First, conflict needs to be visible to influential organizational participants and sustained. Partisan actors enacting one particular time conception oppose and suppress alternatives in seeking to protect their interests and power. Furthermore, they may engage in covert tactics and expedient settlements of differences to pre-empt alternative time conceptions from gaining traction (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; McGivern et al., 2018). Visible conflict however enables subordinate time perspectives to become accessible to organizational constituents other than those seeking to suppress them. In the InstoBank case, Gina’s ability to mobilize additional allies and resources, maintain her contest for influence and hold conflict open in spite the ebFX team’s counter-praxis was important because it allowed senior management to become involved and for change alternatives to be considered, thereby creating possibilities that eventuated in the reconceiving of change.

Second, it is important that processes of conflict enable actors doing clock or event time to arrive at relatively equal positions of influence and power through praxis and counter-praxis. Dialectical processes of conflict do not necessarily lead to transformation or synthesis, but may instead extend the status quo or result in its overthrow (Hargrave & Van De Ven, 2017; Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). At InstoBank, transformation was contingent on Gina’s ability to argue that e-business change should be geared to emergent customer understandings rather than the calendar, and in the ebFX team’s ability to argue that ebFX needed to continue because completing the change by deadlines was still important. This enabled senior management to navigate its way through a reconceiving of change that enacted both clock and event time understandings.

Thus ambitemporality in change is not only, as prior research suggests, reliant on organizational actors recognizing the value of clock and event time co-existing (Gersick, 1994), the ‘temporal complexity’ of parties that enables them to ‘both integrate and differentiate multiple temporal constructs and perform multiple and seemingly paradoxical activities’ (Huy, 2001, p. 610), or the temporal reflexivity of protagonists in conflict that allows them to move beyond ‘seeing different temporal orientations as contradictory’ (Reinecke & Ansari, 2015, p. 638). When power asymmetries exist, the possibilities of ambitemporality are shaped by the skilfulness of actors doing clock and event time to act and react politically as they engage in conflict with one another and look to gain or maintain power. Ambitemporality occurs not just through the enactment of clock and event time in organizational change and the reflexivity that conflict might trigger, but simultaneously the praxis and counter-praxis of actors contesting power and influence.

Practical implications

For senior managers and actors delivering organizational change, the implications of the InstoBank case study are manifold. Attention needs to be paid to the temporal structuring that goes on within organizations and how this might create power asymmetries against the doing of event time. These are particularly relevant for change endeavours tightly governed by deadlines, weekly meeting schedules, Gantt charts and performance measures focused on progress achieved against the passing of time. These social arrangements need to be balanced by those allowing for alternative event-based notions of time to be enacted and for contests to manifest, in turn creating possibilities for transformation. Also, considering at the outset the ‘meaningful events’ that might occur and incorporating these in change planning and scheduling may allow space for event time proponents to influence change, even if change agents resist this.

Instead of actors engaging in covert tactics to pre-empt resistance and conflict, creating the potential for expedient temporal settlements at the expense of longer-term outcomes, senior managers should encourage the exploration of contested ideas about the nature and pace of change and underlying positions of affirmation and negation. Doing so should increase the possibilities of transformation. Inclusive dialogic approaches to change are important here, as is the deliberate creation of polarized positions about change and its timings early in the decision-making process. These serve to make conflict visible and sustained across multiple organizational constituents and invites those without the ability to mobilize allies and resources to participate.

Independent of these attempts to ‘design in’ conflict between clock and event time, management must also be responsive to emergent praxis from diverse stakeholders doing event time to influence changes. Problematizations of change, the mobilization of evidence, and arguments that there is sufficient time to explore alternatives are all manifestations of praxis that could be encountered. These create opportunities for possible change adaptation and need to be explored rather than discounted.

Conclusion

It is important to acknowledge boundary conditions to the study’s findings and insights. The organizational setting is one where clock time dominates, in line with the study’s focus. Accordingly the primary contribution is restricted to situations where clock time is hegemonic and further research is required to examine how clock time proponents overcome power asymmetries and influence change when event time dominates. These studies could focus on highly creative firms and organizations situated in different cultural contexts as examples. Also, actors enacting event time (Diane and Gina) in this case study were situated outside the formal decision-making processes of the change project with little influence at the outset in the organizational change. It would be interesting to examine how actors with less disparity in their formal influence engage in contest over doing time in change and how this affects ambitemporality’s emergence.

In closing, this study reveals how the doing of event time in change might be possible when circumstances suggest it is unlikely due to clock time’s hegemony. This is important because doing both clock and event time is beneficial for change. Even when power asymmetries exist between actors doing clock and event time, the praxis of event time proponents and how conflict manifests may still allow ambitemporality to emerge.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the helpful comments and insights of Senior Editor Jörg Sydow and the three reviewers of the manuscript.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Suresh Cuganesan

Notes

Author biography

Suresh Cuganesan is Professor and Associate Dean at the University of Sydney Business School, University of Sydney, Australia. His research interests span strategy execution, organizational design and performance measurement. He is particularly interested in issues of how organizations balance competing goals and tensions in the pursuit of value, the governance of large-scale transformations, and collaborative dynamics in multi-party relationships. Suresh worked in institutional banking and management consulting prior to his academic career.

References

Benson

J. Kenneth

(1977). Organizations: A dialectical view. Administrative Science Quarterly, 22, 1–21.

Bluedorn

Allen C.

Denhardt

Robert B.

(1988). Time and organizations. Journal of Management, 14, 299–320.

Blumer

Herbert

(1954). What is wrong with social theory. American Sociological Review, 19, 3–10.

Dougherty

Deborah

Bertels

Heidi

Chung

Ken

Dunne

Danielle D.

Kraemer

Justin

(2013). Whose time is it? Understanding clock-time pacing and event-time pacing in complex innovations. Management and Organization Review, 9, 233–263.

Farjoun

Moshe

(2017). Contradictions, dialectics, and paradoxes. In Langley

Ann

Tsoukas

Haridimos

(Eds.), The Sage handbook of process organization studies (pp. 87–109). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Fleming

Peter

Spicer

André

(2014). Power in management and organization science. Academy of Management Annals, 8, 237–298.

Gersick

Connie J. G.

(1994). Pacing strategic change: The case of a new venture. Academy of Management Journal, 37, 9–45.

Gioia

Dennis A.

Corley

Kevin G.

Hamilton

Aimee L.

(2013). Seeking qualitative rigor in inductive research: Notes on the Gioia methodology. Organizational Research Methods, 16, 15–31.

Granqvist

Nina

Gustafsson

Robin

(2016). Temporal institutional work. Academy of Management Journal, 59, 1009–1035.

10.

Hargrave

Timothy J.

Van de Ven

Andrew H.

(2017). Integrating dialectical and paradox perspectives on managing contradictions in organizations. Organization Studies, 38, 319–339.

11.

Huy

Quy Nguyen

(2001). Time, temporal capability, and planned change. Academy of Management Review, 26, 601–623.

12.

Jaques

Elliott

(1982). The form of time. London: Heinemann.

13.

Kunisch

Sven

Bartunek

Jean M.

Mueller

Johanna

Huy

Quy Nguyen

(2017). Time in strategic change research. Academy of Management Annals, 11(2), 1005–1064.

14.

Langley

Ann

(1999). Strategies for theorizing from process data. Academy of Management Review, 24, 691–710.

15.

Langley

Ann

Sloan

Pamela

(2012). Organizational change and dialectic processes. In Boje

David

Burnes

Bernard

Hassard

John

(Eds.), The Routledge companion to organizational change (pp. 261–275). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

16.

McGivern

Gerry

Dopson

Sue

Ferlie

Ewan

Fischer

Michael

Fitzgerald

Louise

Ledger

Jean

Bennett

Chris

(2018). The silent politics of temporal work: A case study of a management consultancy project to redesign public health care. Organization Studies, 39, 1007–1030.

17.

Orlikowski

Wanda J.

Yates

JoAnne

(2002). It’s about time: Temporal structuring in organizations. Organization Science, 13, 684–700.

18.

Reinecke

Juliane

Ansari

Shaz

(2015). When times collide: Temporal brokerage at the intersection of markets and developments. Academy of Management Journal, 58, 618–648.

19.

Slawinski

Natalie

Bansal

Pratima A.

(2012). Matter of time: The temporal perspectives of organizational responses to climate change. Organization Studies, 33 1537–1563.

20.

Van de Ven

Andrew H.

Poole

Marshall Scott

(1995). Explaining development and change in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 20, 510–540.

21.

Van Maanen

John

Sørensen

Jesper

Mitchell

Terence

(2007). The interplay between theory and method. Academy of Management Review, 32, 1145–1154.

22.

World Economic Forum (WEF) (2016). World Economic Forum white paper digital transformation of industries, retrieved from http://www.Digital.weforum.org.