Time sensitivity: a delicate and crucial starting point of reflexive methods for studying time in management and organisations

Over recent decades, time studies have gradually become an inextricable part of organization and cultural studies. We have now arrived beyond the stage in which numerous articles and books started with the comment that including a time perspective has ‘hitherto been neglected’ and, consequently, is more or less desperately needed now (Hassard 1996; Lee & Liebenau 1999; Whipp 1994). However, with a wide interest in time(s), new opportunities and needs arise. We now have to reflect on the depth and, more particularly, the methods of research in this field. With a growing number of studies, journals and books, we are confronted with a variety of epistemologies. Most of these represent one focus on temporalities in management and organization, although sometimes there may be multiple foci. Currently, we seem to be at a point where we see time as complex, layered, and with more to it than clock time only. Inevitably, being at this point forces us to develop a multi-perspective method for conducting research; complexity and layeredness call for the unraveling of elements and their recombination. Time studies should have an explorative quality in order to reframe methods of organizing, which we have hitherto taken for granted (Clark 1985; Das 2004), which will also force us to review our methodology.