New publication: Time and Temporality of Change Processes: Applying an event-based view to integrate episodic and continuous change

New publication: Time and Temporality of Change Processes: Applying an event-based view to integrate episodic and continuous change (in the Oxford Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation)

Vice Rector for Research, Head of Doctoral Studies, Associate Professor Kätlin Pulk, Estonian Business School

Professor Tor Hernes, Department of Organization (IOA), Copenhagen Business School (CBS)

Professor in Organization Studies Anthony Hussenot, Université Côte d'Azur

Abstract
Theories of organizational change tend to consider episodic and continuous change to be ontologically incompatible. We discuss how their assumed incompatibility stems from different conceptions of time. The main contribution of this chapter is to demonstrate how, by taking an event-based view, the two types of change may be integrated with one another. Continuous change takes place in the present as events in the making, whereas episodic change is marked by events in the past or as projected upon the future. This endogenous view of time as events “from within” enables the ontological gap between episodic and continuous change to be bridged. It enables us to understand how actors evoke previous episodic changes or project future episodic changes while pursuing continuous change in the on-going present. Also, in this view, continuous and episodic change become seen as two intertwined dimensions of interplay along what we call an immanent temporal trajectory.

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