Organizational time in historical perspective: Foundational thinking and the case for social cycle research

This chapter examines how time and temporality have been analyzed in social and organizational theory. Specifically, it discusses forms of analysis developed prior to the purported synthesizing of conceptual dualities under the “postmodern turn” (Nowotny, 1994; Orlikowski and Yates, 2002). The chapter reviews some of the main concepts and theories of time developed historically by sociologists and anthropologists, and describes how-when applied in organizational research-they have yielded rich and diverse insights into workplace behavior. By drawing upon some of the major foundational figures in the sociology of time-such as Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Georges Gurvitch, Karl Marx, Pitirim Sorokin-we note not only differences between their positions, but also how such differences, when contrasted systematically, offer a broad basis for appreciating time as reflecting a cyclical as well as linear, heterogeneous as well as homogeneous, and processual as well as structural phenomenon in theoretical and empirical investigation.