Introduction

Integrating time and knowledge to understand organizational evolution: towards a conceptual framework

“…Time is among our most precious instruments of orientation. This utilitarian conceptualization stems from considering that, by definition, thanks to every system of time orientation and measurement individuals are able to quantify their lives, give significance to their existence, and synchronize their activities within their social groups (Paniccia, 2002; Facer et al , 2021). Historically, this conceptualization has been of fundamental importance; it has revolutionized the ways through which time has been interpreted and organized, determining the separation between the temporality of ancient and modern societies, with the former centred on human beings and the latter on natural phenomena (Elias, 1991; Ancona et al , 2001a).…”

Possibility and the temporal imagination

“…Possibility research and scholarship, however, also has its own temporalities, rhythms and narratives. Possibility Studies is located in the multi-layered timescapes of academic institutional life – from the arc of personal careers to the long-term histories and impacts of universities and their interactions with the times of local communities, students, markets, funders and governments (Facer & Smith, 2021; Gibbs et al, 2014; Sliwa et al, 2021). Possibility Studies necessarily emerges from the familiar juggle of personal time, project time and process time distributed across networks of local and global relationships.…”

“…How can this field practice a way of learning and knowing together and with others that recognises that we are, in Ruth Ozeki’s generative terms, not only human beings, but ‘time beings’; that our existence and our work is irreducibly bound up with what it means to live in time? How can we ‘recognise all time as a gift, and that valuing time as a gift is precisely the pre-condition for emancipatory research’ (Facer et al, 2021). Such a temporal frame questions the current political economy of research and invites Possibility Studies to see itself as a practice of care, of relationality, and of pluriversal politics in which other worlds beyond those dominated by the timescapes of modernity, can begin to be glimpsed.…”

A Bergsonian analysis of time in qualitative research: Understanding lived experiences of street homeless people in Moscow

“…Adam’s work summarized and developed the socio-historical and philosophical approaches to time at the theoretical level. In recent years there has also been a resurgence of practical interest in time in qualitative research (see Facer et al, 2021; McLeod, 2017; Sanchez-Mira and Bernardi, 2021; Neale, 2021). For example, Clift et al’s (2021) Temporality in Qualitative Inquiry: Theories, Methods and Practices explores the relationship between time and qualitative research, examining aspects such as the passages of time for research participants, their timelines and transitions, as well as the temporality, rhythms and pace of research practice itself.…”

“…Presenting methodological reflections and several key case studies, Facer et al (2021) explore ‘time as method’ in their text Working with Time in Qualitative Research: Case Studies, Theory and Practice . The authors appeal for ‘more careful attention to the way that our research practices are shaped by how we work in and with time and how they are shaped by (often unexamined) culturally and socially specific ideas of time and temporality’ (p.2).…”