The Enigma of Time

Organizational Improvisation

“…Recently, an increasing number of scholars have examined assumptions about the phenomenon of time (e.g., Gherardi & Strati, 1988;Jaques, 1982; AMR special issue 2001). As Goodman, Lawrence, Ancona and Tushman (2001) note: "Time as a subject of inquiry is pervasive and generalizable.…”

Memory, space and time: Researching children’s lives

“…3 Memories are imbued with knowledge of the present and of the past (Jaques 1982(Jaques /1990). Events associated with strong emotion may be recalled easily -or may be buried.…”

Wild times and domesticated times: the temporalities of environmental lifestyles and politics

“…One class of linear actions are those instrumental actions of production (corresponding to the Greek poesis or 'making'), actions which are oriented to the bringing about of an external goal or telos, whether in the form of a physical artefact or simply a desired state of affairs, which is external to and lasts beyond the activity itself. These actions characteristically take the form of a "goal-directed episode"-a discrete, finite time period, bounded at the beginning by the formation of an intention and at the end by its fulfilment or abandonment, and during which the intention acts as a kind of vector around which behaviour is, often complexly, organised (Jaques, 1982). Economic actions, although often embedded in larger cycles, typically take this linear form, in that they involve a sequence of stages closing with the achievement of (or the failure to achieve) an intended outcome (Faber and Proops, 1996).…”