Essai: Time, Duration and Simultaneity: Rethinking Process and Change in Organizational Analysis

Abstract

The recent rediscovery of concrete lived time from `clock-time' by process theorists enables us to make important adjustments in our thinking about the true nature of temporality, movement and change. For these process theorists, change is reality itself, and `organizations' are nothing more than `temporary arrestations' in a sea of flux and transformation. From this perspective it is the phenomenon of organisation that requires analysis and explanation and not change itself. This understanding opens up new avenues of inquiry for Organization Studies as a field of study. Thus the shaping of contemporary modes of thought, codes of behaviour, social mannerisms, dress, gestures, postures, the rules of law, ethical codes, disciplines of knowledge and so on, makes for more appropriate theoretical foci for an expanded realm of Organization Studies-one which offers a deeper understanding of organisation and its consequences for the world of affairs.