Granting Time: Mechanisms for Managing Ongoing Temporal Tension

I study the management of different coexisting temporal orientations through an extensive qualitative study of the implications of introducing grants into universities. I suggest that temporal tensions between grant time, individual time, and organizational time were ongoing and that grant holders managed these tensions through four coping mechanisms: suspending time, preparing the landing in the organization, reaching beyond one’s own lifetime, and taking shelter in other organizations. This finding contributes to existing debates in studies of time and organization by proposing that a) the enactment of temporal structures is tied to how individuals are embedded in social and organizational structures, b) temporal tensions between different coexisting temporal orientations cannot always be solved, hence we need more nuanced models for understanding them, and c) temporal tensions affect organizations’ ability to project a future regardless of their engagement in the past.