NEON-konferansen 2025
When organizations adopt externally derived management practices, there is broad recognition that these practices are adapted or translated to fit a new societal and organizational context. In particular studies informed by Scandinavian translation perspectives and Actor-Network theory recognize the networked and relationally constituted nature of practices. A travelling practice is decontextualized (e.g. disembedded from its “host context”) and recontextualized, which entails forming a new network of coordinating relationships, e.g. between an introduced innovation practice and pre-existing routines and practices such as strategic planning, budgeting and decision-making.
However, the temporalities of this process of recontextualization, of re-embedding a practice, and weaving new connections has hardly received attention. The implicit assumption is that reweaving connections requires synchronization or rhytmic conformity among interdependent practices (e.g. appraisals as input to salary decisions, or orderly phases of R&D projects aligned with management decision gates). This assumption implies that a central challenge in these translation processes is how temporalities of interdependent practices interact. We know from broader studies of time and entrainment in organizations how different domains of practice are governed by different zeitbegers (the temporalities of market demand, product life cycles, regulated workhours, weekends and holidays, and financial reporting cycles. Various practices constitute event time in themselves (e.g. the uneven and unpredictable progress of R&D projects, or the pace of promotions in a professional service firm). It is thus important to examine how rhythms of various practices interact, and whether connections between practices are formed and stabilized, or whether they weaken and break down.
To study the temporality of translation processes, we traced the implementation of Performance Management in a North European Fortune 100 company over a four year period. The PM practice prescribes tight coupling between a number of aligned HR practices – such as HR planning, recruitment, training & development, and compensation, as well as coupling with other practices such as business planning, accounting. We found that alignment and misalignment of rhythms in the connections of the practice radically altered the enacted practice from its espoused focus on talent development to emphasizing performance and management by objectives.