Understanding, Seeing and Representing Time in Tempography

Abstract

I discuss in this article how ethnographers understand, see and represent time by presenting a research study of a newly established cardiac day unit. Previous discussions of time in relation to ethnography mainly revolved around choosing an appropriate tense for writing up the text, and few studies attempted to develop a framework for conducting time-oriented ethnography in organizations, i.e., tempography. I argue that doing tempography requires considerations in several phases of the research process: how we understand time through theory; how we see time in different qualitative methods; and how we represent time in writing. I present empirical findings that illustrate different ways that time emerges in the ethnographic research process, for example, in observational accounts, through depictions and narratives that support different temporal conceptualizations, patients' stories about their trajectories and as ethnographic accounts of professional work. I contend that ethnographers need to consider: 1. methodological temporal awareness as recognition of coexisting temporal modes in qualitative data; 2. temporal analytical practices as understanding time and temporality through different theoretical concepts; and 3. multi-temporal merging as a matter of representing diverse perspectives in ethnographic writing.

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

“…, 2016) might be helpful for recognizing the temporal experience and dynamics in the flux of organizing. For instance, Scheller (2020) followed time schemes in hospital units to connect scheduled activities such as preparation, surgery and so forth. Tracking these temporal objects over time illustrates how both non/human organizational actors collapse the past and the future.…”

“…to explore forms of research that combine a QROM 18,1 concern for participation with a concern for the ethical responsibility of our interpretations of organizational life" (p. 262). Every time researchers focus on representing a specific temporal structure, construct or norm, or even when we follow predefined temporal structures such as projects (Maoret et al, 2011;Plotnikof and Pedersen, 2019), calendars or schemes (Scheller, 2020) that are predominant in organizing, we may lose the opportunity to give voice to minorities who may have other temporal perceptions (Sharma, 2014). This lack of representation when researching temporality suggests that as researchers develop temporal reflexivity, they should also undertake a critical questioning of their own assumptions, as well as the ethical considerations regarding whose and which temporalities are accounted for, and with which effects and political functioning (Sabelis, 2001).…”

“…Discussion: contouring a timely methodological research agenda This paper expands conceptual advancements regarding temporality in organization studies (Hernes et al, 2013;Langley et al, 2013;Reinecke and Ansari, 2017) to more comprehensively include temporal methodology and, specifically, temporal reflexivity. Despite emerging concerns about temporal methodology (Dawson, 2014a;Sabelis, 2001;Scheller, 2020), a shared debate is still lacking. Hence, method insights remain largely disconnected which prevents the field from moving forward methodologically and individualizes the challenges of dealing with temporal method designs and time bias.…”

“…Implications for future methodological developments This paper advances methodological developments in organization studies by encouraging scholars to pay attention to temporality along with other qualitative research design considerations (Dille and Plotnikof, 2020;Scheller, 2020;V asquez and Cooren, 2013). Qualitative research methods often implicitly address temporality, for example, in longitudinal studies that follow a phenomenon over time, in interview guides predetermining a certain sequence, or in the inherent logic of the research process from beginning to end (Gherardi et al, 2019;Plotnikof and Pedersen, 2019).…”

“…Hence, we also invite researchers to experiment with new temporal methods inspired by, for example, temporal awareness (Dawson, 2014b), temporal ethnographies (Scheller, 2020), temporal network analysis (Feddersen, 2020) and to sensitize other methods to temporality, e.g. shadowing (Butcher, 2013), interviews (Gherardi et al, 2019) andvisuals (de Vaujany et al, 2021).…”