Slides for a presentation about time, rhythm and ethics in organisations

1. Organisational Time
and Rhythm: The
Potential of the Ethical
Temporal in Informing
Engagement with
Educational Culture and
Change

2. Background and Context
• Overarching interest in the processes of change. Constant and
intensifying in education
• Interest in time – often the elephant in the room in education
• Focus on workload – the individual experience of time and the
impacts of educational practice and policy
• Ontological perspective – complex process orientation
• Complexity thinking – need to consider processes across scales
• Need to consider organisations as a whole

3. Organisations and Time
• Use of organisational sciences as a lens
THINKING ABOUT YOUR DAY-TO-DAY WORK AS AN EDUCATIONAL
PROFESSIONAL, LIST FIVE WORDS YOU’D USE TO DESCRIBE YOUR
EXPERIENCE OF TIME
• Generally, there is an impression that organisations are
increasingly pressed for time
• Time is an ethical process
“The acceleration of speed has had largely detrimental
consequences with the decline of the public sphere, the erosion of
the democratic process and the increased power of the military
complex.” (Bartram, 2004: 289)
“Speed is power itself” (Virilio, 1999: 15)

4. • Organisations are increasingly changing from a character of ‘stable and
durable’ to ‘ephemeral and temporary’. (Just think of free
schools/academies which have opened and close in a few years!!)
• The acceleration in organisations is in part the result of the ‘efficiency’
narrative.
• Organisations are underpinned by the understanding and meaning of
time
• Most organisations are then played out as a series of rhythms
“Everyday life in organisations is rhythmic.” (Ancona and Chong, 1999: 40)
WHAT ARE THE RHYTHMS IN YOUR ORGANISATION? HOW ARE THEY
CREATED/NEGOTIATED?
• Pina e Cunha (2009), argues that rhythm is made up of two different
forms of time: chronos and kairos
“In the past the man has
been first; in the future
the system must be
first.”

5. “Organisations collectively build their sense of time and their time
experience. [There are] distinctive rhythms of organising”
• Chronos – sequential time or ‘clock-time’. Has become aligned with
efficiency narratives (dominant in all school activities). Time as
resource, time as linked to rigour and discipline. The ethic of efficiency.
• Kairos – the right of opportune moment. Has become linked to the idea
of subjective time, Time as experienced and understood. Complex and
fluid.
• Pina e Cunha argues that rhythm is a mixture of these two elements.
• Rhythms occur at all scales between the individual and the
organisational. Hnece, there can be many different rhythms, including
official and unofficial.
• Some become organisational enshrined, some are lost or even actively
stamped out. This is what makes time an ethical process

6. • Pina e Cunha argues that the interplay of Chronos and Kairos leads to four different rhythmic patterns in
organisations
 High Intensity Chronos: acute perceptions of external rhythms (e.g. policy, customers, innovations in the
sector) which drive activity
 Low Intensity Chronos: weak sensitivity to external rhythms. Instead much more focus on internal
rhythms of the organisation.
 High Intensity Kairos: Intentionally created internal psychological rhythms. Sensitivity to the needs,
cultures and perceptions of those in the organisation.
 Low Intensity Kairos: Lack of intentionally created internal psychological rhythms. Lack of focus or
interest in the cultures and perceptions of those within the organisation.
ARE YOU MORE INTERNALLY OR EXTERNALLY FOCUSED AS AN ORGANISATION? IS YOUR ORGANISATION
MORE FOCUSED ON AN ‘EFFICIENCY’ OR A CULTURAL MODEL OF WORKING? WHERE DOES AGNCY WITHIN
THE ORGANISATION LIE?

8. • Pina e Cunha goes on to argue that these different rhythmic
elements lead to four types of organisation
 Hypercompetitive Organisations
• Time is seen as central to the way the organisation works.
• Time pressures are created as the organisation reacts constantly to
competitors and the external rhythms beyond the organisation.
• The organisation is designed to shift quickly to new practices.
• Built for change, as this is at the core of the work done.
• Can lead to lots of change with little filtering of new ideas. Hence
tends to pursue lots of change agendas all at the same time to
assimilate ideas form beyond the organisation.
• Desire to ‘stay ahead’.

9. Pulsed Organisations
• Internal rhythms are more important than external ones.
• Can be fast and flexible but not driven by external speed and
rhythms
• Not over-reactive to external change
• A mixture of mechanistic and organic factors
• An attempt to bring structure and freedom together
• Internal rhythms become part of the culture. E.g. Slow Food
movement
• But can become either unstructured or can become overly
internalise and not engage with change beyond.

10.  Pressed Organisation
• Managers become busy and run the organisation through
interaction with external forces.
• Managers create a sense of busyness and acceleration
• External rhythms drive the organisation, but do not necessarily
become internalised. Change is not explained and therefore
internally may not be seen as important/necessary.
• There may not be capacity for change. The organisation is
actually built for efficiency and stability.
• Change, especially when driven by external forces through
managers, can feel like ‘firefighting’ and leads to stress.

11.  Out of Time Organisations
• Led by bureaucracy and old patterns of practice.
• Vested interests which are difficult to shift
• Organisation works by rhythms no longer used in the wider sector
• Can lead to a non-responsive and mindless belief that things work
well and there is no need for change. Work becomes sealed off
and self-referential
• Work is led by annual review and planning cycles but with little
regard for what occurs beyond.

12. Final reflections
• Our work is fundamentally temporal in character
• We have lost sight of time in education as we have accepted an
‘efficiency’ clock-time view of work.
• Time is inherently ethical as a process and we need to think explicitly
and carefully about how we use, and are impacted by, time.
• Organisations also take on certain temporal characteristics which can
affect how we work and how we perceive our work
• To think about creating more sustainable rhythms and ‘timescapes’ is an
ethical task

13. Ancona, D. & Chong, C.L. (1999) Cycle and synchrony: The temporal role of context in team behaviour.
Research in Organisational Behavior, 18, 251-284.
Bartram, R. (2004) Visuality, Dromology and Time Compression: Paul Virilio’s new ocularcentrism. Time
and Society, 13 (2/3), 285-300.
Pina e Cunha, M. (2009) The organizing of rhythm, the rhythm of organizing. in R.A. Roe, M.J. Waller &
S.R. Clegg (eds.) Time in Organisational Research. Routledge: Abingdon, pp.220-237.
Virilio, P. (1999) Politics of the Very Worst. New York: Semiotexte