Temporary organizing under tension: Between stability and change

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Timo Braun
• Subject Area: Accounting and Finance
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 362666693

Temporary organizing in the shape of projects, events or contract and temporary work is a widely spread empirical phenomenon that still continues to grow in importance and that reflects both, the uncertainty as a result of intensified competition in globalized markets, and the "Zeitgeist" of acceleration and time limitation in society. It provides high levels of flexibility to the actors involved and it is the predominant form of organizing to implement innovative and transformative activities. Although temporary organizing is analyzed by different disciplines (for example, management research, organizational sociology, innovation research, economic geography) in a rather fragmented way, so far no integrated approach has been found, at least no one that merges the partially opposing findings. The aim of this network is therefore to illuminate temporary organizing from the perspective of different disciplines and thus promote a transdisciplinary theory development. In particular, the tension between temporary and permanent organizing will be addressed, to discuss the following central question: How can the interaction between stability and change in organizations be understood and possibly balanced? In addition, it will be discussed how insights resulting from of the temporary perspective influence the development of organizational theory which currently increasingly addresses issues of time and temporality. Not least, the scientific network will reflect the currently dominant empirical methods and systematically discuss the potential of more process-oriented approaches and the combination of different methods (survey, ethnography and network analysis). Such mixed-methods could much better detect the inherent change and relational embeddedness of temporary organizing and the entailed tensions.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks