Time and Crisis

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical argument that the study of time provides crucial explanatory perspectives to the analysis of governmental crisis responses. The article claims that time is an external condition and an internalized feature of organizational behaviour. It follows that time influences governmental crisis responses but can also be exploited by actors during such critical episodes. The article discusses the properties of time and its consequences during crises along these two notions, reviewing existing scholarly work on time and crises. It concludes with a plea for a more explicit and systematic time-centred study of governmental crisis responses.

Key words:

• Crisis management
• executive politics
• organization theory
• temporality
• time

Notes

1. I am grateful to Thurid Hustedt and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the article.

2. In May 2011, an Escherichia coli bacterial outbreak occurred in Germany, causing in many cases the life-threatening haemolytic-uremic syndrome. Only in late June, several weeks later, the government had formally identified its cause, fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt. During the outbreak, a total of 4,321 EHEC infection cases were officially reported, fifty people in Germany died (RKI, 2011).

3. An exception is the Scandinavian school of project studies in ‘temporary organizations’ (see Lundin and Söderholm, 1995; Sahlin-Andersson and Söderholm, 2002; see also Bennis, 1965; Goodman, 1967; Goodman and Goodman, 1976).

4. This article's argument is confined to governmental organizations.

5. The article neglects the temporal characteristics of policy measures adopted in governmental crisis responses (Goetz and Meyer-Sahling, 2009: 189–90).