TY - JOUR
T1 - Changing Times for Digitalization
T2 - The Multiple Roles of Temporal Shifts to Enable Organizational Change
AU - Söderlund, Jonas
AU - Pemsel, Sofia
N1 - Epub ahead of print. Published online: January 15, 2021.
PY - 2021/1/15
Y1 - 2021/1/15
N2 - Shifting an organization’s temporal order can be a key mechanism for accomplishing organizational change, but it is also fundamentally problematic: instead of helping an organization accomplish change, it may simply reinforce an already failing course of action. Our current understanding of the roles that temporal shifts play in enabling organizational change is inconclusive in terms of when and how temporal shifts contribute to the success of organizational change. We exploit an in-depth case study of a new digitalized design approach implemented at Advanced Construction to demonstrate how a temporal shift can increase temporal awareness, among organizational members, of the salient and differing temporalities involved. In this case, the increased temporal awareness facilitated improved temporal coordination, which in turn figured prominently in making actual change possible. Our study identifies three complementary roles of change-inducing temporal shifts—namely, in connection with past experience, current activities, and future directions. Thus, we develop a deeper understanding of the relation between temporal shifts and organizational change while offering a novel account of how the establishment of a temporal zone harbors those three roles of temporal shifts.
AB - Shifting an organization’s temporal order can be a key mechanism for accomplishing organizational change, but it is also fundamentally problematic: instead of helping an organization accomplish change, it may simply reinforce an already failing course of action. Our current understanding of the roles that temporal shifts play in enabling organizational change is inconclusive in terms of when and how temporal shifts contribute to the success of organizational change. We exploit an in-depth case study of a new digitalized design approach implemented at Advanced Construction to demonstrate how a temporal shift can increase temporal awareness, among organizational members, of the salient and differing temporalities involved. In this case, the increased temporal awareness facilitated improved temporal coordination, which in turn figured prominently in making actual change possible. Our study identifies three complementary roles of change-inducing temporal shifts—namely, in connection with past experience, current activities, and future directions. Thus, we develop a deeper understanding of the relation between temporal shifts and organizational change while offering a novel account of how the establishment of a temporal zone harbors those three roles of temporal shifts.
KW - Organizational change
KW - Temporality
KW - Temporal shifts
KW - Temporary organizations
KW - Case study
KW - Organizational change
KW - Temporality
KW - Temporal shifts
KW - Temporary organizations
KW - Case study
UR - https://sfx-45cbs.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/45cbs?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&url_ctx_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:ctx&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info:sid/sfxit.com:azlist&sfx.ignore_date_threshold=1&rft.object_id=954921344196&rft.object_portfolio_id=&svc.holdings=yes&svc.fulltext=yes
U2 - 10.1177/0018726721991623
DO - 10.1177/0018726721991623
M3 - Journal article
JO - Human Relations
JF - Human Relations
SN - 0018-7267
ER -