How Organizational Change Emerges from Everyday Work: The Role of Temporal Nexus

We address the puzzle of why some events of everyday activity in organizations generate organizational change, whereas others do not. Our study of ship design and construction company contributes to the understanding of how certain events of activity have a temporal orientation that enables them to be generative of organizational change. When comparing the temporal orientations of activities at different events we found that change was generated when the event (1) formed synergetic nexus between past and future activities; (2) combined a long temporal reach into past activities with immediate future application of ideas, which enabled actors to (3) project future activities that differed markedly from on-going activity. We develop the concept of “temporal nexus events” to explain how organizational change emerges through connecting dynamics at such events. We then extend our contribution further by showing how everyday activity at other events becomes vital support for the change process. We develop a model to explain how the two types of events of everyday activity interact in change processes.