A Time to be Concerned

The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the way time is currently understood and managed by organizations. In particular, the concern is with the claims made by policy makers in this area and the limited conceptions of time employed by the academics involved. After surveying the major themes in the study of time and organizations, the paper seeks to supply a basic conceptual vocabulary relevant to the task of understanding contemporary management. The second half of the paper illustrates how a pluralist conception of time might lead to a fuller appreciation of the continued diversity of time-ordering systems in organizations and their multiple sources and meanings.