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15 - Temporality and Institutional Maintenance

The Role of Reactivation Work on Material Artefacts

from Part IV - History and Duration: Making Things Last, Enduring Politics and Organizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

By
Amélie Boutinot ,
Sylvain Colombero  and
Hélène Delacour
Edited by
François-Xavier de Vaujany ,
Robin Holt  and
Albane Grandazzi
François-Xavier de Vaujany
Affiliation:
Universite Paris Dauphine-PSL
Robin Holt
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Albane Grandazzi
Affiliation:
Grenoble Ecole de Management
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Summary

This chapter investigates the relationship between temporality and the maintenance of an institution by focusing on the role of material artefacts that instiante it. The pressure of time can not only challenge institutions that are often considered temporal, but also their material artefacts which can face decay or damage. In line with some institutional scholars for whom institutions never completely die, we consider material artefacts as “remnants,” i.e., as traces that remain of something that once existed. As such, those artefacts can be brought back to life, and by consequence the institution they instiantate, through what we call “reactivation work”. This “reactivation work” performed on material artefacts can follow a conservative approach, in reactivating artefacts as they were originally designed in terms of material and/or meanings, or a progressive approach, to make them fit with more contemporaneous or future expectations. Whatever the temporal approach, we believe this alternative view on institutional maintenance and material artefacts offer new paths for exploring the life of institutions and, more specifically, their possible atemporal nature.

Keywords

Institutional maintenancereactivation workmaterial artefactsremnants
Type
Chapter
Information
Organization as Time
Technology, Power and Politics
 , pp. 329 - 348
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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