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6 - Between Abandon and Inquiry

On the Way to Emancipatory Temporalities in Organizing

from Part II - Re-orienting Critique in Organization Studies? Exploring Jointly Time and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

By
François-Xavier de Vaujany ,
Aurélie Leclercq-Vandelannoitte  and
Gazi Islam
Edited by
François-Xavier de Vaujany ,
Robin Holt  and
Albane Grandazzi
François-Xavier de Vaujany
Affiliation:
Universite Paris Dauphine-PSL
Robin Holt
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Albane Grandazzi
Affiliation:
Grenoble Ecole de Management
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Summary

The bulk of management and organization studies draw on cybernetics and control-oriented views of time. Management is expected to follow a goal-oriented temporality, and activities keep correcting or adjusting both goals and patterns of organizing. In this chapter, the authors defend a more paradoxical view of temporality. By means of a detour towards the works of Guy Debord and John Dewey, both dérive and flânerie on the one hand, and inquiry and determination on the other hand, are jointly conceptualized as key organizing processes. From that perspective, collective activity and its politics appear as the productive differences in-between an infinitude of events oriented either towards activity or passivity, horizontality or verticality.

Keywords

DeweyDebordTemporalityDériveFlânerieInquiryDetermination
Type
Chapter
Information
Organization as Time
Technology, Power and Politics
 , pp. 116 - 135
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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