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Abstract

In this essay I explore the role of time in proximal and distal approaches to organizational analysis. I argue that an instrumental and linear view of time may undermine efforts to describe organizations as partial and contingent pro cesses. Therefore, I supplement instrumental time with a discontinuous and non-teleological account, using A. Giddens' and N. Luhmann's systems frame works to illustrate my argument. Both theorists explain how systems extend present conditions through communication technologies that shrink time and space and, concomitantly, that facilitate reflexive control over future condi tions. However, I argue that the systems framework may overstate organiza tional control by instrumentalizing time in the extension and reproduction of formal organizational structures. I then use the idea of temporal dislocation to signify how 'otherness' subverts systemic presence and thus offers a way of studying those ('untimely' aspects of organizational life that are typically mar ginalized in organizational analysis.

Keywords

Descriptors: time organization post-structuralism social theory agency

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Essai: Dislocating (Instrumental) Organizational Time

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