Timely methods: a methodological agenda for researching the temporal in organizing

Purpose: This paper stimulates methodological debates and advances the research agenda for qualitative research about time and temporality in organizing processes. It develops a framework for studying the temporal in organizing that contributes by: (1) providing an overview to prepare for and navigate various methodological challenges in this regard, (2) offering inspiration for relevant solutions to those challenges and (3) posing timely questions to facilitate temporal reflexivity in scholarly work.

Design/methodology/approach: Based on a literature review of studies about temporality in organizing processes, the authors develop a framework of well-acknowledged methodological challenges, dilemmas and paradoxes, and pose timely questions with which to develop potential solutions for research about organization and time.

Findings: The framework of this study offers a synthesis of methodological challenges and potential solutions acknowledged in the organization studies literature. It consists of three interrelated dimensions of methodological challenges to studying temporality in organizing processes, namely: empirical, analytical and representational challenges. These manifests in six subcategories: empirical cases, empirical methods, analytical concepts, analytical processes and coding, representing researchers’ temporal embeddedness and representing multiple temporalities.

Originality/value: This paper allows scholars to undertake a more ambitious, collective methodological discussion and sets an agenda for studying the temporal in organizing. The framework developed stimulates researchers’ temporal reflexivity and inspires them to develop solutions to specific methodological challenges that may emerge in their study of the temporal in organizing.