2015/05/01 by Nina Granqvist, Robin Gustafsson · 259 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Computer science #Construct (python library) #Critical Realism in Sociology #Epistemology #Generative grammar #Higher education #Institutional change #Institutional research #Institutional theory #Law #Management and Organizational Studies #Pace #Perspective (graphical) #Political science #Public Policy and Administration Research #Public administration #Social science #Sociology #Temporalities #Temporality #Work (physics)
paper · doi:10.5465/amj.2013.0416
published in Academy of Management Journal 59(3), 1009-1035 (Academy of Management)
openalex publication_date 2015/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Time is inherently present in empirical research on institutional change—most studies sequence actions and events across stages of development, over time. Yet research has overlooked how temporality, as a negotiated organizing of time, shapes institutional processes, despite the fact that timing, duration, and tenor of relationships are their foundational elements. To unpack the role of temporality in institutions, we examine how actors engage in temporal institutional work—that is, how they construct, navigate, and capitalize on timing norms in their attempts to change institutions. We draw on an inductive study of an institutional project to establish a novel foundation-based university that subsequently came to pace major statewide university reform. We identify three forms of temporal institutional work: entraining—as a top-down, routinized, reproductive form—and constructing urgency, and enacting momentum—both as bottom-up, issue-driven and generative forms. We show that by engaging in these types of work, actors produce windows of opportunity, synchronicity, and irreversibility as shared beliefs of temporality. These beliefs, in turn, shape how the wider institutional change unfolds. Our study shows that temporal institutional work enables institutional change. We discuss the implications for reconceptualizing institutional research from a temporal perspective.