Temporality

This chapter attempts to broaden the understanding of the potential of temporality in project management research. First, we illuminate temporality with respect to the temporariness of projects, the project life-cycle, and the role of entrainment in projects. Then, we outline aspects of the ontology of temporality and how it can inform complex project organizing. The ontology of temporality considers projects as highly embedded in multiple temporal flows where past, present, and future are understood as mutually constitutive rather than sequentially ordered. Such a perspective allows for exploring the effects of projects being situated in time and emerging over time. As projects move through time actors weave past, present, and future together in a manner that changes the project over time.