Lesson seven:

The temporality
of organizational
change
“Time is inherent in the very definition of
change and thus it underlies any change
process. Yet, the role of time in organisational
change management research has often been
that of an implicit backdrop considered to be of
inferior conceptual importance” (Koll & Ernst
p. 24)
Today’s temporalized agenda
1. We study the ‘nearly impossible’ change from the private sector case by Koll
& Ernst (2022)
2. We study a change case that focuses on how we can understand change
agency in the hospital sector by Ernst (2021)
3. Temporal work and temporal politics in organizational change. We go through
and discuss the article by McGivern (2018).

You temporalize a case of organizational change of your own choosing

Time in organizational change

• Often associated with linear clock

time and time commodification,
assuming that time can be
controlled and managed
• Time can also be perceived as
qualitative – a social construction
and something context dependent
Caught between times: Explaining resistance to change
through the tale of Don Quixote (Koll & Ernst 2022)
• The case seeks to provide a reponse to the reason for an (extremely)
prolonged change process.
• The change setting: A scandinavian telecommunications company
• Telco, the transformation from state- owned monopoly to shareholder owned
enterprise working in a competitive market.
• The change time span: + 25 years.
• The topic of change: Modes of work and orientation to work.
• Involved in the change and change stakeholders:
• Front line managers
• Technicians
• The technicians’ union
Theorization – Bourdieu and temporality
Bourdieu’s theoretical construction of the temporalization of practice
through the concepts of habitus, field, capital
• Inspired by Husserl’s concepts of foresight or protention, Bourdieu
sees overall being in fields as temporally constituted (Atkinson, 2018)
• The concept of foresight concerns ‘the feel for the game’ and the
everyday moves through which agents engage in everyday life
Theorization – Bourdieu and temporality
• Time is something perceived by organizational agents -> time is
subjective
• time as an interpretive, experienced social construction (micro.
agency)
• And time is also a fact, something defined outside and irrespective of
the individual perception of it e.g. clock time, a semester at RUC, a
year etc.
• Time as objective structuring force (macro, structrure)
• -> Bridging the gap between objective time and subjective time
Theorization: Bourdieu and
temporality
‘Like a farmer whose work is
structured according to the rhythm of
the seasons, or a teacher whose work is
divided into semester- long blocks,
temporal structures become so closely
associated with certain organisational
practices that they become deeply
rooted assumptions’ (p. 1)
Theoretical framework
• Pays attention to power and agency in leadership
• Allows us to work in a micro and macro dialectic between forces of the wider field
and organizational local forces
• Doxas: taken for granted understandings of the world
‘The temporal structuring of consciousness arises through a habitus socialised in the
field that allows doxas to develop through a relative stability of that which is
considered true, important or valued in a field’ (p.26)
• Hysteresis: A habitus that is out of synch with the field -> objective social crisis
‘hysteresis is a technical term for those instances when ‘the sense of a probable future
is belied and, when dispositions ill-adjusted to the objective chances […] are negatively
sanctioned because the environment they encounter is too different from the one to
which they are objectively adjusted’ (Bourdieu, 1990,p. 62). (p.27)
 The case
• The introduction of the business case in
2014 was a ‘game changer’ because it
enforced a shift from the previous
orientation towards production to an
orientation towards business
• New temporal orientations are implied by
this shift
• The operations department is threatened
with outsourcing if they do not reach
performance targets - > objective social
crisis
The data: KPIs as temporal power, structuring
the temporality of work
‘I don’t actually think we as managers have
succeeded in making the KPIs understandable
and the importance of reaching these targets’
KPI’s enforcing
new rules to the
game
The data: The temporality of employment

The LIFO • ‘They think they still live in last-in-first-out times. This
was how it used to be. There was a [seniority based]
ranking list and if we intended to sack a civil servant
principal of who was, say, ranked 22 then we would have to sack the
21 preceding him first. There was an exclusive security
eternal in employment. But the LIFO [last in, first out] principle
has been cancelled […]. No-one is protected. So, they
employment must deliver on productivity or they’ll get the boot’.
The data: Atomizing time

‘Of course, there was always, to some

extent, focus on statistics, on whether you
completed the work in time or not. But
now they [the management] can sort of
pick it apart atom by atom […] as in ‘you
were two minutes too slow on that one
and three minutes too slow on that one
[…]’. (p. 32).
The data: Longing for employment to
end
‘It means that people think: When can I
retire? Because some have reached the age
where they don’t bother, but just stay around
until they are eligible for early retirement
benefits. They get up in the morning and do
what they are supposed to do and nothing
more’ (p. 33).
Time for reflexion

• What do you think

will / can enable
the change
towards a
shareholder
orientation of the
technicians?
AGENCY, STRUCTURE,
TEMPORALITY AND
HISTORY IN
LEADERSHIP
TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE IN A
HOSPITAL
(Ernst 2023)
Background and aim of the study
Aim: To build an understanding of how managers experience and
navigate difficult organizational transition and the role of external
forces in a field in constituting leadership agency.
In this, I look specifically at temporality and history in the field with
Bourdieu.

Background: The study examines the establishment of a new acute care

department from the perspective of the department’s shifting leaders over a time
span of six years.
 Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus, capital
Theory and hysteresis as a toolkit to bridge structure
and agency in leadership.

• Every field has its own its own rhythm and

pace, defined by the field’s history and the
forces that structure it.
• Time is perceived and constructed from
particular position in fields and
organizations.
• leadership within an organization is tied to
groups, persons, institutions and politics
inside as well as outside the organization.
Theory
• The study spans micro and macro analytical levels and constitutes
leadership as dependent on the temporality and history of a field
(Atkinson, 2019)
• Leadership agency is understood as the ability to act as preferred or
prescribed given the position of the leader in the organization and the
field
• Thus, agency emerges and results from a position in a
field at a particular point in time and thus cannot only
be confined to subjective intentions.
• Possession or dispossession of agency emerges in
relations between agents and the positions they occupy
in a field.
The importance of the medical specialties

• The ACD and the proposed new acute care

specialization were confronted with the ‘old’
system of historical force and value.
• This was a system of ideas and
understandings of care as defined by medical
specialization (silos).
• the powerful medical specialties that are
deciding care organization in hospitals.
• the ACD was perceived as threatening them
The importance of the medical specialties
• The history and developmental movement of the field is important
for understanding how leadership was and could be performed in
the ACD during the three moments in departmental time included
in the study.
• ‘The space of possible leadership’:
• leadership is contingent upon a leader’s position in the field
and the match between a leader’s habitus (dispositions) with
the structural conditions of the field at a particular moment in
time
• The leaders of the ACD were not backed by the field’s most
important capital.
 • The space of possible leadership explains the
The data conditions for leadership and the performance of it
as well as the experience of leadership from the
perspective of the leaders.
• The leaders were tasked with implementing
new progressive care organization in the entire
hospital organization, which at first proved to
be impossible.
• hysteresis manifested as a time urgency for the
managers in needing more time for the ACD to
succeed as intended.
• The leaders:
• Collegial scepticism and organizational
inertia.
• Lack of upper managerial support.
The data “It’s unfortunate when the other
departments file complaints about
us to the board, telling what we
haven’t managed to do sufficiently
well. We find it hard to establish a
mutually committing collaboration in
the house. I mean, the entire
hospital should feel obliged to make
this concept work. We are an acute
care hospital now” (Head Senior
Doctor and department manager).
Analysis of the data

• The constellation of dominant forces in the field

changed when powerful political actors decided
to embark on the introduction of an acute care
medical specialization.
• And used their powers to enforce the realisation
of the ACD concept by making it dependent on
economic capital in the individual acute care
hospitals (six years later).
• The space of possible leadership transformed.
Points for discussion
• Which important stakeholders can you identify
in this field?
• Why was the decision to introduce an acute care
medical specialization so important?
• How would you characterize the three ‘moments
in time’ that we hear about in the article and in
which leadership took place?
• Why / how did the acute care specialization
enable leadership?
 Temporal politics
and temporal work
in organizational
change
McGivern et al 2018
An empirical study of management
consultancy project to redesign public
healthcare
The case - setting

• ‘The English Department of Health commissioned a management consultancy to

advise how to make major efficiency savings in the NHS’.
• ‘The Quality Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) programme was
formally launched, aiming to make £20 billion worth of efficiency savings (from an
overall NHS budget then of £106 billion) during the period 2011–14; 20% of these
efficiency savings were to be made by redesigning primary health care.’
• ‘Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) were responsible for oversight of NHS services
across large geographical regions and performance-managing NHS Primary Care
Trusts (PCTs), which commissioned (purchased) and managed local primary
healthcare services’ p. 1012.
Silent temporal work
• Social and occupational groups may conceive of time in different ways
• Enact and manipulate temporal conceptions
• Silent temporal work is, according to the authors, ”covert or
unarticulated political work to construct, defend, challenge or
interpret conceptions of time and temporality in organizations” (p.
1008)
• Project task time frames were fixed and imposed through a boundary
object
 Theory: The boundary object

Boundary objects are physical objects

or abstract concepts, which serve as
temporary or permanent bridges
between intersecting social worlds -> a
temporal window of opportunity

Susan Leigh Star: ‘My initial framing of the

concept was motivated by a desire to analyze the
nature of cooperative work in the absence of
consensus.’ Source: This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of
a Concept. Science, Technology, & Human Values 35(5), p. 605
The boundary object
• ‘Is a physical object or a concept, which serves as a temporary or
permanent bridge between intersection social worlds’ (p.1010)
• They may facilitate collaboration but siometimes they do not
• Which ‘social worlds’ (and temporal orientations) do we hear about in the
text?
• Which boundary object?
• What did the boundary object do?
• How did the PCT managers respond to Elmhouse’s boundary object?
 The case – consultancy work

• Significant temporal work may revolve around the construction and

maintenance of task and time boundaries during projects
• Failure to complete a project on time can be disastrous for projects with
negative consequences for project managers’ careers
• Attention to temporal goals may therefore push other project / change
objectives in the background
• Consultants’ use of time has been found to create tensions between the
project outcomes consultants and clients aim to achieve
 Temporal worlds and
organizational change
The temporal orientation of consultancy work
• Project based organizations. Speediness, efficiency. ‘time is
money orientation’
• It is important to complete projects on time
The temporal orientation of the hospital organization
• Healthcare organizations are complex, slow-changing and
contain diverse powerful professional actors (e.g. doctors
and nurses as stakeholders) with differing temporal
orientations.
• Institutionalized organizational structures. Long-term
orientations.
• Organizational change often originate in reform and policy
Theory
• Groups in the organization have different temporal orientations -> intersecting
social worlds.
• Organizational change difficulties may reflect differing underlying temporal
orientations that lead to politics and conflict
• Stakeholders perform temporal work in organizational change , e.g
constructing urgency
• Broader, complex and longer term factors may be overlooked
• Conflicts over quantitative time may be related to goals and wishes for
showing quick results.
• Temporal norms and pace
• Temporal politics may be unconscious.
Theory
• These authors draw on Kaplan and Orlikowski’s (2013) theory
on temporal work.
• Temporal settlements are coherent with wider
understandings, plausible in context and politically acceptable
• They enable progress to implementing change
• temporal settlements are coherent with wider
understandings, plausible in context and politically acceptable
to actors involved, enabling progress from arguing or
debating meanings to implementing change
• These settlements may break down, producing new cycles of
temporal work (Temporal work may be overt and covert)
Temporal orientation

• Temporal orientations may relate to professions,

organizations and work
Time for reflexion: Give three examples of jobs, professions and / or organizations with
different temporal orientations.
Findings: consultants’ temporal work
• Elmhouse: Rapid but precarious careers
• Elmhouse consultants engaged in temporal work to construct
and contextualize clients’ problems in ways persuading them
that fast-paced, short-term projects provided their solution,
drawing on established Elmhouse models and ways of thinking

‘Indeed, our operating model is geared towards blitzing and

leaving’
Findings: Temporal interests
• While interactions around boundary objects may facilitate
understanding of collaborative tasks, given sufficient
interpretive flexibility, Elmhouse’s PowerPoint template and
project timeline were developed and fixed before PCT
managers’ involvement.
• Elmhouse consultants focused on legitimating and guarding
their predetermined task and time frames during the project,
rather than engaging in two-way dialogue to develop a common
understanding of the local NHS and collaborative solutions.
(p.1016).
• -> temporal clashes.