Page 66 - Journal of Management Inquiry, July 2018

280 Journal of Management Inquiry 27(3)

tools should not tap into preferred and routinized courses of First of all, different kinds of time (clock time, event-based
action but rather stimulate actors to reflect or even leave them time, etc.) relate to the OTAP’s material and visual inscrip-
puzzled, so that they stop and think about what is happening. tions. For example, the red line is a case of clock time, and the
With regard to the visual-material layout of tools, Gärtner and boxes are instances of event time because they indicate start-
Huber (2015) argue that the power of the visual might afford ing time and duration of surgeries. The (relative) size and
narrowing down the focus of attention to only some details location of these boxes are based on rules (e.g., the longest
and simple or easy-to-grasp explanations, which would surgery should never be the last in one shift) and standard
inhibit mindfulness. For practitioners, it will be crucial to times for the duration of a surgery. These visualizations and
reflect on the design of tools, because the visual-material lay- their different material instantiations are not mere representa-
out is likely to induce or inhibit mindfulness. The scarce lit- tions of availabilities (who “has” time), but inscriptions that
erature that deals with how to design tools often draws on a routinely convey information to different user groups. The
vital principle of engineering design: ease of use. Well- conveyed information about temporal boundaries (when
designed products or systems are those that can be used with- activities start and end) and workloads (who is staffed where
out much cognitive effort because they engender user trust, and when) is used in planning and predicting the unexpected,
confidence and conform to users’ preferred perspectives and because defining temporal boundaries contributes to the con-
expectations (Butler & Gray, 2006). The imperative of “ease- stitution of distributed and shared expectations about the tem-
of-use,” however, means to favor routinized courses of action poral sequencing of work (what comes first, what is parallel).
or acting on autopilot. Consequently, future research might While the different user groups are likely to be aware about
focus on the design of tools and their inscriptions to specify the content of these expectations, they are unlikely to be
how practitioners are affected by the visual-material dimen- aware about how these expectations are constituted, main-
sion and how to design tools to facilitate mindfulness as a tained, or changed. Our findings show that the OTAP’s
way of managing the unexpected. inscriptions play a vital role in these processes and, thereby,
in the routinized structuring of time. Consequently, our find-
ings support the idea that artifacts are not merely physical
Picking Up Temporality
traces of an organizational routine but constitute and influ-
Scholars in this field have remained largely implicit about ence routines (see Pentland & Feldman, 2008).
their conceptualization of time, but their passing comments In addition to the sequencing of work, the OTAP’s
indicate that they assume a linear clock time and they treat inscriptions shape the relative importance of work and mate-
time as a resource that can be “spent.” For example, Weick rialize preferences of different professional groups. For
and Sutcliffe (2006; emphasis added) emphasize that HROs example, the OTAP codifies the rule that longer surgeries
are seen as more important than shorter ones, and also rules
spend (a) more time examining failure as a window on the health about allowed and forbidden time slots or periods of rest for
of the system, (b) more time resisting the urge to simplify surgeons and staff. This produced differences regarding the
assumptions about the world, (c) more time observing operations focus of attention and what kind of events the different
and their effects, (d) more time developing resilience to manage groups were prone to react to. For example, working time
unexpected events, and (e) more time locating local expertise slots indicated whether a surgery could be performed or not,
and creating a climate of deference to those experts. (p. 516)
which freed organizational members from spending time on
In contrast, we pick up the idea that temporality is a complex arguments about work allocation and prevented them from
organizational phenomenon as it has been outlined by schol- others’ requests. This is vividly illustrated by the incident
ars who investigated the temporal structuring of sensemak- when one surgeon tried to bring a Category D patient for-
ing processes in managing the unexpected (Patriotta & ward to an earlier time slot to prevent the surgery staff from
Gruber, 2015) and organizational practices in general having to work overtime. The medical point of view (fasting
(Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). Their concept of temporality guidelines would have required postponing the surgery) cre-
does not treat time as a mere resource that can be gathered or ated a conflict with inscribed time-related points of refer-
spent, but as being relative to several points of reference. We ence (the categorization system and work regulations). Time
build on and extend these studies by considering the notion may, therefore, be conceived as a scarce resource whose
of inscriptions to show that a revised understanding of time allocation is negotiated based on interests but, in addition,
and its relation to materiality changes the way scholars can the different forms of time inscribed by the OTAP’s (im)
think about mindful organizing. Understanding temporality material artifacts structure preferences and (re)direct atten-
as an organizational and sociomaterial phenomenon allows tion from patients’ safety to other issues while managing
discussing the role of visual and material aspects in the tem- unexpected events. Picking up temporality understood this
poral structuring of how routine and mindful processes in way sheds light on the role of tools in structuring time and
managing the unexpected are mutually constituted. considering or rejecting interests, which affects the ability to