Getting the Timing Right: Kairos as the Rhetorical Framing of Time

As organizational actors invoke and create the past, present and future of their organizational contexts in support of proposed decisions, the rhetorical framing of time is central to decision-making. To explain how such rhetorical framing occurs, this paper explores kairos as a conceptualization of the duality of encountering and enabling “the decisive moment.” Following a process of advocating a new IT strategy in a financial firm, we find that kairos appears when the rhetorical framing of time is consistent with dominant interpretations of the interrelations between the past, present and future of the organization. Thus, the paper conceptualizes kairos as constitutive for decision-making; only when the timing is right, will persuasive efforts prevail.