ESSAY PLAN – TIME

Question: Clock time is but one construction of work and time. Consider alternative constructions.

Buzz phrases:

Introduction:
- Lots of time, not just one (clock time)
- Define clock time… o ‘We recognize time in a simple form: the past is gone, the present passing, and the future coming’ Lee and Liebenau o Natural and Taken-for-granted o Self-evident, Requires no explanation o Homogeneous and divisible in structure o Linear and uniform in its flow o Objective and absolute – existing of independent of objects and events o Measureable/quantifiable/mechanical (containing discrete moments subject to precise measurement o Divisible o Abstract o Unitary (subject to only one interpretation) o ‘The linear-quantitative tradition’, ‘even time’, or ‘the Newtonian conception’ ‘clocktime’, ‘chronological time’ or ‘even time’ o o Clark defines even time (clock time) – ‘it flows evenly and continuously; is free from contingent events and periodicities; and is completely quantifiable and so can be added, subtracted, divided, used in a variety of heuristic calculations and in complex formulae’ o This concept is the dominant one in our contemporary society, and is closely associated with the development of industrial society. It is also the basic assumption upon which our society relies for its operation and management.

- Negatives of clock time… o Although time is so fundamental that people in any culture regard their conception of it as simply an immutable part of reality, we will see that time is fundamentally a social construction that varies tremendously between and within societies. o Though perhaps useful for practical purposes, it is limiting (A very limited notion) for gaining a comprehensive understanding of time in organizational settings… too simple to understand organizational phenomena o The clock time concept should be complemented by concepts which have rich implications for gaining a deeper understanding of organizations in the context of culture. o the clock time concept is just one historical concept which evolved with the development of capitalist society, and on which the contemporary industrialized Western societies are based.

- Recently, some researchers have begun to oppose the common-sense view of time and to suggest that this be supplemented by another view of time, which emphasizes its social nature
- Whatever aspects of time may be emphasized, and whatever they may be called, social time, organizational time, subjective time, the plurality of time, event time and so on, they share an underlying assumption that time is socially constructed. It is also assumed that the clock time concept should be complemented by these concepts of time. Therefore, it is appropriate to set the social time concept as the antithesis of the concept of clock time
- Talk about other types of time, list authors
- Relate it to work and organizations o Event-based temporalities play an important role in organizational life. The central ‘time problem’ for organizational sociology is to overcome the clock time concept. In other words, the challenge facing organizational sociology is to incorporate a notion of the plurality of time-reckoning systems which are embedded in the social constructs of organization members. o Differences in temporality (independent variable) among cultures, organizations and professions may affect a wide range of organizational processes and individual behavior. Decision making, learning processes, negotiation and innovation are influenced by notions of time which the actors or parties concerned have in their minds. Among them, strategy formulation is one of the frequently mentioned topics as time is the fundamental dimension in which strategic planning takes place. o Issues of time and timing are absolutely central to modern management o Work in contingency theory and especially studies of environmental complexity and variability have implied strongly the importance of organizational perceptions of temporal variability in planning processes o If time varies depending on work groups, organizations and societies as suggested in varying time, there is no reason why we cannot assume that time itself is affected by various organizational factors. Some researchers investigate the effects of changes in organizational factors, such as innovation and technology, on temporal aspects (dependent variable) of organizations or organizational work. o Considers time as an underlying aspect of organization culture. ‘How time is partitioned, scheduled, and used has both dramatic and subtle influences on organizations and the people in them’.

Pre-industrial patterns of work were irregular
- Natural rhythms of the seasons, night, day, the sea, tides
- Stood in place of hours/minutes/seconds
- Workers controlled their own time/worked with they needed to

The plurality of time

Clark
- Event times – flow unevenly, are discontinuous, and contain varying levels of contingency and indeterminacy with respect to the onset of event trajectories and even to their actual occurrence. We can use the plural form of the word ‘time’ here because event time is not absolute, and each organization may have its own time by this definition. Their units are relatively imprecise and cannot be calculated, event times are highly local and some are known to only a few organizational members. According to Clark, time does not exist outside events, but time is in the events and events are defined by organizational members. Time is therefore relative, not absolute, and there are a plurality of times, each of which is appropriate to understanding specific organizational phenomena.

The multiplicity of time

Hofstede
- Added a temporal dimension of long-term vs. short-term orientation to the four dimensions of cultural differences which he found to form the basis for different work-related attitudes in different cultures. This temporal dimension refers to whether the culture’s values are oriented toward the future (long-tem orientation) or towards the past and present (short-term orientation)

Roy
- Outlines how workers engaged in tasks involving the repetition of very simple operations over an extra-long workday, six days a week, overcame the formidable ‘beast of monotony’. They made their experiences tolerable by putting meaning into their essentially meaningless days. They established their own event-based, time-reckoning system for structuring the day. They punctuated their monotonous and boring working day with several interruptions designated as ‘times’, each of which was the signal for a particular form of social interaction. The regularity of ‘peach time’, ‘banana time’, ‘window time’, ‘pickup time’ and ‘coke time’, together with the specific themes which accompanied each time, meant that instead of the day being endless it was transformed into a series of regular social interactions. In place of a single, long time horizon, they had several short horizons.

Schriber
- He argues that many jobs evidence recurring or cyclical characteristics and that one can examine not only individual job cycles, but the way in which various job cycles relate to one another and support the work flow of an organization. Specifically, Schriber argues that central managerial tasks are to… ‘set deadlines within the work unit (cycle speed and frequency, for example), negotiate interdependent deadlines with other work units (cycle interconnectedness), set and modify schedules (cycle speed, frequency, and interconnectedness), configure task sets into jobs, and allocate temporal resources to them (cycle variety). Another managerial function is the modulation of input and output, as well as the management of the throughput process (cycle discretion and autonomy)’

Time and strategy

Das
- As an alternative, he suggests that time should be recognized as a subjective phenomenon. Subjective time implies a time conception, which is shared (or owned) by any subject or entity, whether it is an individual, group, organization or any other entity that is of interest to management and organizational research.
- Relates the future orientation (independent variable) of organizational members to various aspects of strategic planning in a contemporary corporate environment. He classifies planning actors according to their individual perspectives of the future, and investigates the relationship of the perspectives to their preferences for short and long planning horizons. In this work, he developed an instrument to measure the individual future orientations. An individual with a relatively ‘near’ future time perspective tends to anticipate that the most important events will occur relatively sooner than an individual with a ‘distant’ future time perspective. The determination of planning horizon, defined as the period of time for which the plan is developed, is a critical factor in the strategic planning process, as it forms the basis for the allocation of corporate resources and energies, as well as the coordination of short-run and long-range planning. He shows that planning actors with near future time perspective will prefer a shorter planning horizon than those with distant future time perspective.

Hay and Usunier
- Examined how different concepts of time (independent variable) across cultures influence and shape the practice of strategic management and its success in international banking in four countries: United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. A central proposition is that Japanese corporations and banks operate with a culturally specific concept of time, which shapes their strategic planning process. They conclude that to understand an organization fully, and to make sense of its strategic choices, the mission it pursues and the plans it adopts, it is necessary to eludicate its temporal culture.

Changing time

Time itself is affected by various organizational factors, such as innovation and technology, on temporal aspects (dependent variable) of organizations or organizational work

These 4 are all very similar, basically if you can just remember that they’ve all studied the effects on time by mostly information technology then you’ll be sweet

Stamper
- To analyze the cultural impacts of a new (technological) system, Stamper devised ‘evaluation framing’. This is based on Hall’s primary message systems, which consist of ten areas of human activities, including temporality. The evaluation framing provides a systematic method of analyzing the impacts of a new system on an organization. With regard to our discussion on time, it can show how a new system affects, for example, individuals’ perception of time and their way of organizing time within the organization which adopts it. Although stamper does not exclusively focus on time, and has not conducted any empirical work based on evaluation framing, he raises the question of how technology affects temporality (dependent variable), which is one of the fundamental elements of organizational culture.

Barley
- In a study of the introduction of computerized equipment into radiology departments, Barley examines the impacts of the new equipment on temporality (dependent variable) and on social relations. It is the fist empirical research that addresses the issue of how technologies alter the temporal order of a workplace. He employs a dichotomy of ways of organizing time from an anthropological perspective; monochronic and polychronic ways. In the former, people do one thing at a time while in the latter several things are done at once. Barley found that the new computer-based equipment increased the monochronicity of radiologists’ work by restructuring the duration, sequence, temporal location and rate of recurrence of events in their working day. It also enhanced the symmetry of temporal organization between radiologists’ and technicians’ work. His investigation does not cease here, in these external aspects of temporality. The increased symmetry contributed to less conflict between radiologists and technicians, and changed the social relationships between them.

Failla and Bagnara
- Address the problem of changes in time (dependent variable) caused by information technology focusing specifically on the relationship between time in decision making and information technology, but this has three implications for the study of time in organization theory. First, the introduction of information technology causes profound changes in the time-frame patterns of the decision-making process. These changes are not limited to decision-making processes. Information technology eliminates rigidity in work rhythms, giving flexibility. The organization of work is increasingly becoming less rigid in terms of time patterns. This is especially true of office information technology supports, which ‘help to eliminate or diminish the importance of time-frames generally accepted as appropriate for performing a given activity’. Second, the impacts of information technology on time assume different patterns depending on the stages in the development of information technology. The automation of routine activities by main frames, decision support technologies by personal computers and the recent development of virtual reality technologies have different meanings in terms of time. Third, what is important in organizational studies is their emphasis on organizational culture. They argue that the relationship between information technology and time should be considered within the context of organizational culture. Information technology affects individual time patterns. The interaction with information technology also has important effects on time patterns at an organizational level. Its impacts on time encourage the members of the organization to recognize their time, but it is essential that any such reorganizing of time should be shared by, and be consistent with, that organizations culture to enable the organization to function properly

Lee
- Investigates how information systems affect the temporality of work (dependent variable) in trading companies using electronic data interchange (EDI). The case study shoes that temporal dimensions of export procedures in the companies are transformed by the introduction of a new EDI system. It also suggests that information technologies tend to increase the polychronicity of organizational work.