How Assumptions About Time Divide and Connect Epistemic Communities in Business and Management

Abstract

Business and management studies comprise distinct epistemic communities that frequently do not interact or collaborate. While this has been explained as paradigm incommensurability, construct ambiguity or the variance–process, this CrossRoads article sets out a less commonly invoked source of difference: how our theories conceptualize time. This includes assumptions about whether the future is determined or open (temporal openness), whether and how change takes place (temporal directionality) and the appropriate timescales and detail for analysis (temporal duration). To illustrate the importance of these three temporal dimensions, influential traditions in strategy, entrepreneurship, institutional theory, process studies, population ecology, real‐options and scenario planning are mapped. The mapping demonstrates that many temporal differences between epistemic communities are differences of degree that may offer productive tensions for collaborative approaches, even though some may remain difficult to reconcile. Through a set of diagnostic questions, this CrossRoads piece offers a framework for interdisciplinary temporal brokerage within and beyond business and management.