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7 - Future Work

Toward a Practice Perspective

from Part II - Re-orienting Critique in Organization Studies? Exploring Jointly Time and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2023

By
Matthias Wenzel ,
Hannes Krämer ,
Jochen Koch  and
Andreas Reckwitz
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

In the ‘future of work’ in particular and organizations more generally, the future is a ubiquitous companion and serves as a key point of orientation for actions. However, at the same time, the future is elusive, as its open-endedness undermines attempts to fully predict and ‘manage’, but also examine this temporal mode. In response to the intricate challenge of exploring the role of the future in organizations, we argue that practice theory can help us gain a deeper understanding of how organizational actors engage with the future. By revisiting key principles of practice theory and their relationships with time and the future, we propose to explore ‘future work’, i.e., the situationally enacted, performative, heterogeneous, and relationally entwined bundle of practices through which organizational actors engage with events that are to come. We conclude by discussing the implications of gaining a practice-based understanding of the future in organizations and suggest avenues for future research.

Keywords

future workfuture-makingpractice theorysituationalityperformativityheterogeneityrelationality
Type
Chapter
Information
Organization as Time
Technology, Power and Politics
 , pp. 136 - 155
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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