Timely methods: a methodological agenda for researching the temporal in organizing

Abstract

PurposeThis paper stimulates methodological debates and advances the research agenda for qualitative research about time and temporality in organizing processes. It develops a framework for studying the temporal in organizing that contributes by: (1) providing an overview to prepare for and navigate various methodological challenges in this regard, (2) offering inspiration for relevant solutions to those challenges and (3) posing timely questions to facilitate temporal reflexivity in scholarly work.Design/methodology/approachBased on a literature review of studies about temporality in organizing processes, the authors develop a framework of well-acknowledged methodological challenges, dilemmas and paradoxes, and pose timely questions with which to develop potential solutions for research about organization and time.FindingsThe framework of this study offers a synthesis of methodological challenges and potential solutions acknowledged in the organization studies literature. It consists of three interrelated dimensions of methodological challenges to studying temporality in organizing processes, namely: empirical, analytical and representational challenges. These manifests in six subcategories: empirical cases, empirical methods, analytical concepts, analytical processes and coding, representing researchers’ temporal embeddedness and representing multiple temporalities.Originality/valueThis paper allows scholars to undertake a more ambitious, collective methodological discussion and sets an agenda for studying the temporal in organizing. The framework developed stimulates researchers’ temporal reflexivity and inspires them to develop solutions to specific methodological challenges that may emerge in their study of the temporal in organizing.

Temporal multimodality and performativity: Exploring politics of time in the discursive, communicative constitution of organization

“…By bringing temporal multimodality and performativity to the forefront, we gain new insights into the omnipresent, influential role that time(s) play in organizing work and subjectivity under neoliberal capitalism. This poses new questions for how our field may cross-fertilize with the emerging organizational time scholarship more generally, and especially regarding the development of new vocabulary (Feuls et al, 2022; Hernes, 2022). As notions of, for example, temporal structuring (Reinecke and Ansari, 2017), material temporality (Hernes et al, 2021), and temporal clashes (Pors, 2016) also highlight the need to understand how times stretch, rupture, or break down, we see a promising future development through enhancing explicit critical perspectives on time across organizational discourse and CCO.…”

“…Although this paper’s primary contribution is theoretical, developing a critical approach to temporal multimodality and performativity, we included a fairly detailed method section for the purpose of opening what is often a “black box” of methodological operationalization (Feuls et al, 2022). That is important to explore how critical theorizing of time can intra-act analytically and empirically, even in a conceptual paper.…”

“…While rich debates about time stimulate neighboring fields of narrative (Langley et al, 2013), sense-making (Dawson and Sykes, 2019), and process studies (Feuls et al, 2022; Hernes, 2022), similar efforts are surprisingly marginal across communicative constitution of organization (CCO) and organizational discourse studies (ODS), despite their critical scrutiny of taken-for-granted phenomena (Basque et al, 2022; Hardy, 2022). Arguing that everyday discourse and communicative practices—talk, interactions, texts, visuals, symbols—co-constitute organizing over time, this literature explores the precarious becoming of, for example, identity, strategy, collaboration, power, and resistance.…”