Materiality and Time : Historical Perspectives on Organizations, Artefacts and Practices

Sociomaterial research overcomes the dichotomy between social and material worlds by concentrating on organizational practices. These practices are constituted by, but also produce, material and social dynamics. This research is currently having an important impact in management studies and adopts a subjective investigation of time to explore materiality and materialization. Studying the institutional evolution of an organization implies long time spans and it is shown more clearly through the inclusion of material traces of past actions.

Materiality and Time is split into three parts: Part I explores how time is materialized and performed in organizations, i.e. how artefacts and material space perform time and temporal dynamics in organizations. Part II examines how organizations and organizational members are constituted by and constitutive of material artefacts. Part III reflects on what a historical perspective on these materializations can bring to the study of organizations. Contributions focus on the materialization of time and the material dynamic of organizations.