Tensions and paradoxes in temporary organizing

Temporary organisations are time-limited organisations that are created with a deliberate termination point. Temporary organisations can increase flexibility, allow for innovative and transformative activities with less resource commitment, and reflect a ‘Zeitgeist’ of acceleration and time limitation in society. They also give rise to tensions and paradoxes that require new adaptive and coordinative practices. Research on temporary organisations has moved from primarily exploring the distinction between temporary and permanent organisations to using temporary organisations to study a range of phenomena such as temporality, acceleration, identity, and attachment–detachment dilemmas. This volume reflects this new orientation. We map empirical phenomena along the lines of events, projects and networks, and explore three conceptual themes that run through the nine chapters that comprise this volume: (1) temporality in temporary organisations; (2) the interaction between temporary and permanent organisations; and (3) the strategies and practices that temporary organisation develop in response to tensions and paradoxes. Temporary organisations are time-limited organisations that are created with a deliberate termination point. The ‘built-in termination mechanism’ (Lundin & Söderholm, 1995, p. 449) can be calendar based, for example a film festival Tensions and Paradoxes in Temporary Organizing Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 67, 1–13 Copyright © 2020 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20200000067006 2 TIMO BRAUN AND JOSEPH LAMPEL or a conference has a specified starting and end dates, whereas” termination can be defined by goal attainment, for instance an R&D project that is terminated once the new product is delivered. Lundin and Söderholm (1995) map a life-cycle between the beginning and end for projects that holds for temporary organisations more generally. According to this schema, temporary organisations start life as a concept, enter a development phase, proceed to implementation, and then end with termination. Structurally, temporary organisations may take various forms such as festivals, organisational and inter-organisational projects, emergency response organising, and networks of temporary organisations. Some forms are strongly institutionalised, others are more protean. For example, film festivals or conferences are institutionally circumscribed events that are not accepted as such by participants unless they possess certain standardised features. On the other hand, a ‘project’ is a label that is used by organisers to describe temporary organisations that can vary greatly in size and shape, from a mega project such as the Channel Tunnel, to the construction of a local clinic. Moreover, projects are temporary organisations that are used to perform tasks across industries that have little in common; not only traditional industries such as constructions or pharmaceuticals, but also creative industries such as filmmaking, theatre, or advertising, service industries such as consulting or software development as well as playing an increasingly prominent role in the public sector. In spite of their ubiquity, temporary organisations attracted relatively little research interest from general management scholars until recently. This is changing as temporary organisations are increasingly being asked to achieve goals and perform tasks that previously were routinely assigned to permanent organisations. Some researchers argue that the process is now so widespread as to merit its own label, hence the term ‘projectification’ (Hodgson, Fred, Bailey, & Hall, 2019; Jensen, Thuesen, & Geraldi, 2016; Midler, 1995). The shift to greater use of temporary organisations reflects the limitations of permanent organising, but also the inherent advantages of temporary organising. Competition and technological change challenge the capacity of permanent organisations to effectively manage key activities. Forms of temporary organising that increase flexibility and allow actors to implement innovative and transformative activities with less resource commitment are therefore becoming more pervasive. In the new century, the increasing popularity of temporary organising is not only a response to economic and technological imperatives, but also reflects a ‘Zeitgeist’ of acceleration and time limitation in society (Jensen et al., 2016; Kenis, Janowicz-Panjaitan, & Cambré, 2009; Lundin et al., 2015). This has implications to our fundamental assumption about permanent organisations. The dichotomy between permanent organisations that are intended to exist indefinitely and temporary organisations that are intended to have a finite life span is increasingly being erased by economic, social, and technological developments (Anell & Wilson, 2002). The buying and selling of firms, the frequent restructuring of organisations, and technologies that allow activities to be outsourced, and emergence of the so called ‘boundaryless career’, create conditions in which the permanent can no longer be taken-for-granted by stakeholders, or by researchers. Activities and