r Academy of Management Journal

2019, Vol. 62, No. 6, 1818–1847.

https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2017.1481

WHY DO EXTREME WORK HOURS PERSIST? TEMPORAL

UNCOUPLING AS A NEW WAY OF SEEING
BLAGOY BLAGOEV
Leuphana University of Lüneburg

GEORG SCHREYÖGG
Freie Universität Berlin and University of Graz

This paper develops temporal uncoupling as a new way of seeing the puzzling persistence
of extreme work hours, as well as the temporal relations of organizations and their en-
vironments. Drawing on a historical case study, we trace and analyze the genesis, re-
inforcement, and maintenance of extreme work hours in an elite consulting firm over a
period of 40 years. We find that a small shift in temporal structuring mobilized two
positive feedback processes. These processes consolidated a temporal order that in-
creasingly uncoupled from the traditional workweek. Grounded in these findings, we
make two contributions. First, we challenge the orthodox view of entrainment as an ideal
synchronous relation between organizations and their environments. Instead, we offer
temporal uncoupling as an alternative lens. It enables us to see how both synchrony and
asynchrony are potentially viable options, which coexist and sometimes coconstitute each
other. Second, we shed new light on temporality as a constitutive force that underpins
extreme work hours and offer a novel explanation of their persistence as a case of systemic
temporal lock-in. We develop positive feedback as a mechanism that explains how small
temporal shifts can become consolidated into hardly reversible temporal lock-ins.

Our workload is completely bizarre. It is difficult to
convey to outsiders what it feels like [. . .] to wake up at
6 a.m. on a Monday, get onto an airplane, fly some-
where and come back on Friday night. And everything
that happens in between [is work]. [. . .] If my wife
wants to call me to discuss our upcoming vacation or
the kindergarten schedule of our daughter, I have to tell
her “I am sorry honey, I can’t now. Later. Perhaps. . .”
This feeling of being completely out of phase is difficult
to convey to outsiders. Because outsiders have leisure
time and evenings during the week and we don’t.
(Gregor, senior consultant, emphasis added)
We are truly indebted to Deputy Editor Tima Bansal and
three exceptional anonymous reviewers for their invaluable
feedback and helpful guidance. We are grateful to Waldemar
Kremser, Jana Costas, Dan Kärreman, Jörg Sydow, Shaz Ansari,
Juliane Reinecke, Dennis Schoeneborn, and Ali Aslan
Gümüsay, and to the members of the Leuphana Organization
Studies Group for their useful comments on previous versions
of this manuscript. We thank Lena Hampe and Antonia Rein-
inghaus for their research assistance. We also wish to thank
Consult and our informants for granting us access and making
this study possible. Finally, we are grateful to the German Re-
search Foundation (DFG) for funding this research project, as
well as to the DFG-funded doctoral program Research on Or-
ganizational Paths at Freie Universität Berlin, and to its mem-
bers for providing a stimulating environment for the research.
1818
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Extreme work hours remain a persistent require-
ment of many organizations, despite the increasingly
evident detrimental effects thereof. They undermine
long-term productivity and well-being (Perlow &
Porter, 2009), they reinforce gender inequality (Reid,
2015), and they cost the U.S. healthcare system an es-
timated $37 billion annually (Goh, Pfeffer, & Zenios,
2016). Despite such costs, extreme work hours prove
surprisingly persistent: most individual, organizational,
and regulatory countermeasures have failed to effectu-
ate sustainable change. Prior research has illuminated
the various cultural, technological, and power-related
pressures experienced by individuals and groups to
uphold such temporal patterns. However, an explicit
and systematic explanation of the dynamics that un-
derpin the genesis, reinforcement, and maintenance of
extreme work hours as an inherently temporal phe-
nomenon is still missing.
We address these dynamics by focusing on tem-
porality. Temporality refers to the “changing, con-
structed, and negotiated organizing of time” (Granqvist
& Gustafsson, 2016: 1009). This focus enables us to
make explicit what has remained mostly implicit in
prior research: that extreme work hours persist in a
state of asynchrony relative to deeply entrenched so-
cietal work time rhythms, such as the 40-hour work
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
week, and the rhythms of private life, as in Gregor’s
story above. At the same time, this persistent
asynchrony points to significant shortcomings in
current theorizing on organizational temporality.
The dominant approach in this field—entrainment
theory—foregrounds the drivers and advantages of
synchrony and frames asynchrony as an inferior,
transitory state that cannot persist (e.g., Ancona &
Chong, 1996; Pérez-Nordtvedt, Payne, Short, &
Kedia, 2008). By backgrounding asynchrony, the
entrainment lens creates a one-sided view of tem-
poral structuring. Hence, the persistence of extreme
work hours constitutes an empirical and theoretical
puzzle that calls for new ways of seeing. This puzzle
motivated us to ask the following research question:
Why and how do extreme work hours persist in a
state of asynchrony relative to dominant societal
work time rhythms?
We address this question by empirically investi-
gating extreme work hours at an elite strategy con-
sulting firm, which we call Consult. Spanning over
40 years, our empirical analysis shows how, at
Consult, extreme work hours emerged and persisted
because a seemingly minor shift in the temporality of
consultants’ work mobilized two distinct, yet mu-
tually dependent, positive feedback processes. First,
a process of daytime synchronization with clients
positively reinforced extreme work hours by con-
solidating expectations about consultants’ pace of
work and temporal availability to clients. Second, a
process of desynchronization from societal work
time norms positively reinforced extreme work
hours by increasingly aligning originally unrelated
activities—such as hiring, scheduling, and project
calculation—with the long work hours pattern.
Contrary to what entrainment theory would predict,
these processes led to an internal temporal order
that increasingly uncoupled from dominant socie-
tal work time rhythms. We further show that,
through uncoupling from regular hours and posi-
tive feedback, Consult was able to accrue positive
returns (exponential growth) at first, but later the
adverse effects (employee burnout and unsustain-
ably high attrition rates) overshadowed the benefits.
Eventually, the positive feedback locked Consult
into the extreme work hours pattern and made
it difficult to dislodge, even in light of repeated
change efforts.
In theorizing these findings, we draw and elabo-
rate on the notion of temporal uncoupling as a
new way of seeing. A concept originally intro-
duced in modern social systems theory (Luhmann,
1995, 2012a, 2018), temporal uncoupling denotes
1819
the detachment of organizational temporality from
broader societal rhythms. Grounded in our findings,
we develop a process model of temporal uncoupling.
Whereas entrainment theory would suggest that—in
the long term—organizations end up in sync with the
dominant societal rhythms, our model illustrates the
opposite: organizational choices to synchronize with
one rhythm might render desynchronizing from
others necessary and mobilize positive feedback dy-
namics that reinforce the original choice. Due to pos-
itive feedback, organizations can become locked into
the rhythms they choose and can have difficulty
unlocking even in light of mounting costs. As a result,
initially successful temporal patterns (e.g., extreme
work hours) are likely to become increasingly
persistent up to a point of irreversibility, a situation
we call temporal lock-in.
By theorizing temporal uncoupling as a new way of
seeing, we make two key contributions to the litera-
tures on organizational temporality and extreme work
hours. First, we offer a deeper understanding of the
temporal relations of organizations and their environ-
ments by recognizing the interplay of synchrony and
asynchrony and revealing a potential trade-off between
them. Second, our findings and theorization eluci-
date a novel, fundamentally temporal problem that
explains the puzzling persistence of extreme work
hours: temporal lock-in. Temporal lock-in explains
how latent and invisible dynamics can entrap entire
organizational systems on a path of requiring extreme
work hours from their members. This insight has im-
portant implications for practice because it suggests
that organizations need to move beyond the current
focus on piecemeal work–life and cultural change
programs and embrace a more systemic approach to
change.
THEORETICAL FRAMING
In what follows, we first examine extreme work
hours and their persistence. Then, we move to their
temporal structuring and propose studying it
through the lens of temporal uncoupling rather than
entrainment.
The Puzzling Persistence of Extreme Work Hours
Extreme work hours—defined as patterns of 60
to 120 hours of work per week—have become widely
criticized for their increasingly evident detrimen-
tal effects on organizations, their members, and so-
ciety more generally (e.g., Blagoev, Muhr, Ortlieb,
& Schreyögg, 2018; Kellogg, 2011, 2012; Michel,
1820 Academy of Management Journal
2011; Padavic, Ely, & Reid, 2019; Perlow, 1999).
Many firms have reacted to such criticism by
launching various work–life programs, such as part-
time work, teleworking, or flexible or reduced
hours. Yet the results have been disappointing—
most programs have failed (Perlow & Kelly, 2014;
Putnam, Myers, & Gailliard, 2014). In some cases,
they have even ended up “achieving the opposite,
intensifying the pace of work even more” (Michel,
2015: 51).
To date, our understanding of this puzzling
persistence remains limited. Most prior studies
have examined various normative pressures that
push individuals and groups into working extreme
work hours. Normative pressures can result, for
example, from technologically mediated connec-
tivity to work (Mazmanian, Orlikowski, & Yates,
2013), gendered workplace norms (Pyke, 1996;
Williams, 2010), organizational control mechanisms
(Lupu & Empson, 2015; Michel, 2011; Perlow, 1998), as
well as broader cultural discourses such as those about
professionalism (Kärreman & Alvesson, 2009) and the
ideal worker (Acker, 1990; Reid, 2015). Even though
these studies have different theoretical foci, they share
a common concern: extreme work hours are surpris-
ingly persistent and we know very little about why this
is the case. We argue that a core reason for the lack of
theoretical progress regarding this question stems from
the focus of prior research on how individuals and
groups experience and navigate this persistence,
rather than on what constitutes and maintains it. To
address this problem, we shift research attention to
temporality as a constitutive feature of extreme work
hours.
As a notable exception, the seminal work of
Perlow (1997, 1998, 1999) demonstrated how
the social structuring of time at work and beyond
constitutes a core generative force that brings about
extreme work hours. Perlow’s (1999) research also
suggests that organizations can reduce extreme
work hours by deliberately intervening in tem-
porality. However, Perlow’s own intervention—
though successful at first—ultimately failed to
achieve sustainable change, again indicating high
levels of persistence. In sum, prior work has indi-
cated that various facets of temporality—such as
the duration, pacing, and synchronization of work
(and nonwork) activities (e.g., Zerubavel, 1981)—
could be pivotal for understanding the persistence
of extreme work hours (see also Wajcman, 2014).
To more fully understand why and how extreme
work hours persist, we focus on their temporal
structuring.
December
Organizational Temporality and Temporal
Structuring
Scholars of organizational temporality have ex-
amined time as a ubiquitous, social force that
“regulates the structure and dynamics of social life”
(Zerubavel, 1981: 2; see also Ancona, Okhuysen, &
Perlow, 2001). A foundational concept in the study
of organizational temporality is temporal structur-
ing (Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). It denotes the pro-
cess by which organizations and their members
draw on temporal structures to “guide, orient and
coordinate their ongoing activities” (Orlikowski &
Yates, 2002: 684). We define temporal structures as
comprising surface-level temporal patterns and
deep-level temporal orientations. Temporal patterns
are “observable patterns in the timing and pacing
of activities” (Rowell, Gustafsson, & Clemente 2016:
311). Enacted temporal patterns reflect underly-
ing temporal orientations, i.e., “shared manners of
valuing and attending to time” (Rowell et al., 2016:
314). For example, a future orientation is likely to
focus organizational action on expected future out-
comes. By contrast, a present orientation is likely to
focus organizational action on unfolding present
processes.
Most prior studies have scrutinized the dynamics
of temporal structuring through the lens of entrain-
ment (e.g., Ancona & Chong, 1996; Bluedorn, 2002;
Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; McGrath & Kelly, 1986;
Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). Entrainment denotes “the
process in which the rhythms displayed by two or
more phenomena become synchronized, with one of
the rhythms often being more [. . .] dominant and
capturing the rhythm of the other” (Bluedorn, 2002:
148, emphasis added). We define synchrony (and
synchronization) as the convergence of two princi-
pally independent rhythms in terms of phase or pace,
and asynchrony (and desynchronization) as the lack
thereof. Entrainment’s emphasis is on synchronizing
by matching dominant external rhythms called Zeit-
gebers (German for “time-givers”)—i.e., adapting in-
ternal temporal structuring to external circumstances
(e.g., Shi & Prescott, 2012). Entrainment scholars have
even gone one step further by arguing that organiza-
tions that fail to “match” incur various negative out-
comes, including a threat to organizations’ survival
(Pérez-Nordtvedt et al., 2008: 785). Temporal struc-
tures that persist in a state of asynchrony for
decades—even in light of inefficiencies—do not exist
in this theoretical world. In the long run, organizations
either end up synchronized with the broader societal
rhythms or disappear.
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
Because it is one-sidedly focused on adaptive
synchronization, entrainment theory cannot ex-
plain why extreme work hours persist in a state
of asynchrony to dominant societal work time
rhythms. The theory offers little insight into this
question because it tends to overemphasize the en-
vironment’s unilateral causal influence on organi-
zational temporal structuring. By implication, it
downplays how organizations may proactively
shape, articulate, and desynchronize from societal
rhythms. Overcoming these shortcomings appears
imperative for explaining how extreme work hours
persist. In line with this thought, we propose to
study the temporal structuring of extreme work
hours through the lens of temporal uncoupling as a
new way of seeing.
The Theory of Social Systems and Temporal
Uncoupling
Modern social systems theory (Luhmann, 2012a,
2012b, 2018; see also Cooren & Seidl, 2019) turns
conventional thinking about entrainment on its
head by arguing that organizations—like other
types of social systems—follow “a mode of opera-
tion [that] results in a temporal uncoupling of
system and environment” (Luhmann, 2012a: 43,
emphasis added). This idea sharply contrasts
with the adaptation logic of entrainment. Accord-
ing to Luhmann (1995), organizations can only
constitute themselves as social systems by reducing
environmental complexity to a manageable level—
i.e., by selecting relevant environmental elements
and events and thereby ignoring others. Concerning
temporality, this necessarily implies selectivity;
that is, it forces organizations to “give up the idea
of full synchronization with the environment”
(Luhmann, 1995: 43) and select what societal
rhythms they relate to, and how. This selectivity
implies that organizations necessarily temporally
uncouple, at least from some external rhythms.
Without uncoupling, the distinction between or-
ganizational and societal temporality would nec-
essarily collapse; we would not be able to conceive
of an organization’s own temporality as different
from broader societal rhythms. Temporal uncou-
pling, therefore, can be understood as the degree of
difference between internal and external temporal
structures. It is a constitutive feature of organiza-
tional systems; for systems to emerge, they need to
temporally uncouple.
A core implication of temporal uncoupling is that
it “affords internal latitude, since the system is not
1821
determined by its environment” (Luhmann, 2012a:
33). This latitude offers a scope of choice on how to
temporally structure internal activities, when to act
upon the environment, which activities need to be
delayed or accelerated, and last but not least which
activities should or should not be synchronized with
which rhythms. Nevertheless, organizations still
need to use this latitude in a way that allows them to
remain compatible with the environment. As stated
by Luhmann (2012a: 76), “systems produce their
own degrees of freedom, which they exploit as long
as possible; in other words, as long as the environ-
ment tolerates it.” By implication, organizations face
an ongoing challenge in their temporal structuring.
On the one hand, they benefit from building an
uncoupled temporality. On the other hand, they
must ensure that—despite being uncoupled—this
temporality remains sufficiently compatible with the
environment without ever being fully synchronized
with the latter.
Thinking about the temporal structuring of ex-
treme work hours through the lens of temporal
uncoupling offers an alternative to the entrainment
logic and its limitations. It amounts to a more bal-
anced approach that privileges neither environ-
ments’ influence on organizations nor organizations’
influence on their environments. However, the
question of why extreme work hours persist re-
mains open. To explain this puzzling persistence,
we combine the temporal uncoupling lens with
the concept of positive feedback. Positive feedback
is a foundational concept in systems thinking
(von Foerster, 2003; Sterman, 2000), and features
prominently in studies of organizational change
(Plowman, Baker, Beck, Kulkarni, Solansky, &
Travis, 2007) and path dependence (David, 1985,
2007; Sydow, Schreyögg, & Koch, 2009). However,
it has played an insignificant role in the study of
organizational temporality and extreme work hours
to date. Positive feedback is defined as information
that amplifies deviations from an initial state of af-
fairs and, thus, consolidates an emerging pattern
(Maruyama, 1963). Luhmann (1995: 190) too noted
that organizations tend to maintain those temporal
structures that “can mobilize processes of deviation-
amplification (positive feedback) to their own ad-
vantage and keep themselves from being leveled
out.” Building and elaborating on this theoretical
lens, the remainder of this paper draws on a histori-
cal case study to develop temporal uncoupling as a
new way of seeing the persistence of extreme work
hours, as well as the temporal relations of organiza-
tions and environments.
1822 Academy of Management Journal
METHODS
Research Context and Research Process
We conducted a historical case study of Consult,1 an
international consulting firm that focuses on strategy
consulting and has several thousand employees
worldwide. Qualitative approaches are a method-
ology of choice for “understanding phenomena
involving complex temporal dynamics or causal
mechanisms” (Graebner, Martin, & Roundy, 2012:
279), such as the temporal structuring of extreme work
hours (see also Langley, 1999, 2007). As is common in
such approaches, we iteratively adapted our data
collection and analysis strategies to reflect surprising
findings and emergent theoretical ideas.
Our study began in 2013 as an exploration of ex-
treme work hours. Our initial focus was on the effects
of three change projects that Consult had launched
since the mid-2000s to cope with problems associ-
ated with extreme work hours. Initially, we expected
these change projects to be merely a “façade”
designed to lure recruits into joining the firm. How-
ever, we quickly found out that the intentions behind
them were, in fact, more serious; their scope was far-
reaching; their design and execution were exem-
plary. Consult launched the projects because, after
two decades of incredible success, extreme work
hours began causing mounting problems, such as
unwanted attrition, a persistently low rate of female
consultants (about 12%), and declining attractive-
ness as an employer. Nevertheless, all three projects
failed to achieve their intended effects. Extreme
work hours persisted. As neither our informants nor
existing theory could explain this persistence, to us
it constituted an “empirical mystery” (Alvesson &
Kärreman, 2007): How could it be that extreme work
hours persisted even in light of well-designed, in-
tentional change efforts?
Resolving this mystery became the core goal of our
subsequent data collection and analysis. To resolve
1
All names have been replaced with pseudonyms to
protect the identities of those involved in the study. Fur-
thermore, due to confidentiality agreements and ethics
protocols, we are not allowed to publicize data that could
make the company or its members identifiable to outsiders.
Therefore, we chose to omit exact data on firm size, em-
ployee count, geographic origin, and distribution of
branches, as well as the precise years of founding and key
shifts. Our study focuses on developments in the German
branch, although we also conducted interviews with rep-
resentatives of other international subsidiaries (United
Kingdom, United States, and the Netherlands).
December
this mystery, we had to understand the peculiar way
in which consultants’ project work was temporally
structured, its historical origins, and its evolution.
Hence, we began collecting historical data. This data
enabled us to observe the emergence, reinforcement,
and maintenance of extreme work hours over several
decades. This historical approach was also helpful
because “relative temporal continuity” (Anteby &
Molnár, 2012: 515) is a core criterion for deeming
a given pattern enduring and, thus, also persistent.
In sum, Consult was a research context in which
the persistence of extreme work hours—our central
phenomenon of interest—was “transparently ob-
servable” (Eisenhardt, 1989), and thus constituted an
excellent “critical case” (Patton, 2015) for addressing
our research question. Moreover, it was also a typical
case because other elite consulting firms face a very
similar challenge related to extreme work hours.
Data Collection
Our study draws extensively on two sources of
empirical data: (i) archival materials and (ii) (retro-
spective) interviewing. We also collected ethno-
graphic data but do not draw on it in this paper. The
data were collected by the first author between 2013
and 2017 as a part of a larger research project on the
German consulting industry. Throughout the entire
research process, the first author acted as an external
and neutral field researcher and openly communi-
cated the topic of the study to all informants. We first
established contact with Consult in February 2013.
Key representatives in Consult’s human resources
(HR) team responded positively and agreed to support
the study. Eventually, we were granted extensive ac-
cess by a member of the firm’s top management team.
Archival materials. We collected numerous in-
ternal and external archival materials documenting
Consult’s evolution, as well as that of its temporal
structures (see Table 1). First, we collected archived
internal documents. We complemented these internal
documents with external press reports. Consult’s ar-
chive team provided us with an extensive collection
of press articles reporting on Consult. Moreover, we
conducted additional research via the press archives
of major German national newspapers and magazines.
To better understand how Consult’s environment
(i.e., the consulting industry, client relationships,
general economic situation) changed over time, we
also surveyed articles covering broader developments
in the consulting industry. In our research, we focused
on all major daily and weekly German newspapers
and magazines (FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Welt, DIE
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg 1823

TABLE 1
Collected Empirical Material
Data source Collected materials

Interviews 88 semi-structured interviews with:

Internal archival materials
Press reports
Other external archival materials
16 consultants
9 managers
19 partners
6 HR representatives
2 members of the top management team, including the then-CEO
7 client representatives
29 consultants working at other firms
Annual reports, 1975–2003
Employee magazines, 1993–2003
Internal newsletters
Presentations and handbooks for new recruits
Internal guidelines and codes of conduct
Presentations from training events (e.g., stress and time management)
Certificates for family friendliness
Corporate history
Internal surveys
HR documents (e.g., work–life initiatives, career ladder, evaluation and promotion criteria)
Descriptive statistics of revenue and staff
E-mails
257 press articles from leading German daily newspapers and business publications:
156 articles about Consult
101 articles about the German consulting industry
Materials from the Federal Association of German Management Consultants (BDU): timeline of
the German consulting industry, principles of good management consulting, documentation
from conferences
Industry rankings
Career intelligence Web pages (anonymous reports on Consult by current or former employees)

ZEIT, Spiegel) as well as on specialized business
publications (WirtschaftsWoche, Handelsblatt, man-
ager magazin, Capital). We chose these periodicals
because they represent some of the most widely read
press outlets in Germany. Eventually, we gathered 257
press articles covering a period of over 40 years.
Interviewing. We conducted 88 semi-structured
interviews with representatives of Consult and other
major firms in the German consulting industry. In
this paper, we draw primarily on the 52 interviews
conducted at Consult with consultants (16), project
leaders (9), partners (19), HR representatives (6), and
members of the top management team (2), including
the then-CEO (see Table 1 above). The remaining
interviewees included client representatives (7; i.e.,
senior managers at companies that actively use
consulting services), and consultants working at
other firms (29). Interviews lasted between 30 and 90
minutes, averaging 55 minutes. Initially, we chose
interviewees by following the “snowballing tech-
nique,” starting with a group of 10 people at Consult.
Consult’s HR managers established contact with
the initial set of interviewees. We asked Consult to
provide us with informants at all hierarchy levels for
this initial set of exploratory interviews. We then
asked each interviewee to recommend and establish
contact with further informants. As we increasingly
focused on history, we began to purposefully sample
informants and alumni who had started working at
Consult between 1981 and 2001. The vast majority of
our interviewees were employed by Consult at the
time of interviewing. Two informants had retired,
one had decided to quit her job shortly before the
interview, and another had switched to a smaller
consulting firm in the late 1990s. All but four in-
terviews were audio-recorded and subsequently
transcribed, with the consent of the interviewees.
The first author made extensive notes during the
remaining four interviews.
Of particular relevance for our study are 20 retro-
spective interviews with consulting “veterans.”
Some scholars have criticized retrospective inter-
viewing as a potentially biased source of historical
organizational data (Golden, 1992; Langley, 1999).
However, others have argued that, due to issues of
selective recording in internal archives these should
1824 Academy of Management Journal
be complemented with other data such as interviews
(Rojas, 2010). In our case, the lack of sufficient ar-
chived materials that covered the early years of
Consult’s existence made it imperative to rely on
additional retrospective interviews. We are aware
that retrospective interviews are potentially troubled
by post hoc rationalization and a “retrospective bias.”
To minimize such biases, we followed Golden’s
(1992) recommendations by asking interviewees to
describe behaviors and situations (rather than reflect
upon them) and triangulating interview data with
archival materials and press articles or, if not possi-
ble, triangulating the statements of different inter-
viewees. We designed these retrospective interviews
to generate data on the emergence and consolidation
of extreme work hours at Consult. We asked veterans
to describe their first years and projects in the com-
pany, to highlight differences in the organization of
work, and to narrate critical shifts in history of the
firm (e.g., regarding strategy, HR practices, incentive
systems).
Data Analysis
We analyzed our data “abductively” (e.g., Alvesson
& Kärreman, 2007; Peirce, 1978). That is, we initially
approached the empirical puzzle surrounding the
persistence of extreme work hours with the analytical
toolkit of temporality theory—i.e., with the concepts
of temporal structuring and entrainment—but re-
alized that these concepts did not adequately explain
the dynamics in the Consult case. As common in
abductive theorizing, this inspired us to engage in
“problematizing and rethinking dominating ideas
and theory” (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2007: 1269)—
most crucially the adaptation logic of entrainment—
and to search for new ways of seeing. We did so by
iterating between our empirical material, emerging
conceptual hunches, and the existing literature.
Throughout, we employed an “insider–outsider ap-
proach” (Gioia, Price, Hamilton, & Thomas, 2010: 8),
wherein the first author acted as an insider familiar
with the research context and the second author served
as an external “devil’s advocate” assigned to challenge
the suggested explanations and taken-for-granted as-
sumptions. This process involved several steps.
First, we organized all data in a research database
using the software MaxQDA. We applied open coding
techniques to break our historical data into events and
structure those along three dimensions: chronology,
unit of analysis, and initial topic. In line with our
theoretical framing, we distinguished three units of
analysis: (i) temporal structures, (ii) organizational
December
outcomes, and (iii) environmental responses. By tri-
angulating interview and archival data, we induced
the salient features and shifts of temporal structuring
in past periods for which direct observation of time
use was impossible. This coding process allowed us to
generate chronological outputs of all coded segments
for each unit of analysis that was already pre-coded
with an initial topic derived from the data.
Second, we used these chronological outputs to
write a rich, descriptive case narrative. As is com-
mon in longitudinal research, we employed a “tem-
poral bracketing” strategy (Anteby & Molnár, 2012;
Langley, 1999) to break down the narrative into
phases separated by key shifts in Consult’s temporal
structuring. To delineate phases, we inductively
identified two “turning points” (Abbott, 2001): (i) a
shift to so-called “presence projects” in the 1980s
(consultants began spending the entire work week at
their client’s offices), and (ii) a breakdown in hiring
and retention from 2001 onward. These turning
points allowed us to distinguish three phases in the
evolution of Consult’s temporal structuring. In
comparing the temporal structures across phases, we
discovered significant differences. The initial phase
featured shorter work hours and, thus, relative syn-
chrony with the 40-hour workweek. In the second
phase, a pattern of increasingly long work hours
emerged, and a period of exponential growth fol-
lowed. In contrast to the overall working time re-
duction in Germany in this period, Consult’s work
hours increased significantly (see Figure 1). In the
third phase, Consult maintained this temporal
structure even in light of environmental pressure for
change, and intentional change efforts. Because en-
trainment did not capture the overall logic of this
process, which resembled a growing and increas-
ingly persistent detachment from societal work time
rhythms, we went back to theory. After probing
several alternative theoretical lenses, we settled on
temporal uncoupling as a “sensitizing concept”
(Blumer, 1954) that provided orientation and guid-
ance in exploring the data.
Third, we zoomed into the first turning point and
analyzed its implications for the temporal structur-
ing of consulting work. We were able to discern two
interdependent temporal effects. First, consulting
teams switched from an outcome (delivering a thick
report) to a process (tight integration through con-
tinuous workshops) orientation and increased the
frequency of client interactions (through daily
meetings). Second, spending the entire workweek at
the client’s office increased the regularity of long
works hours. We thus theorized this first turning
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
FIGURE 1
Development of the Average Weekly Work Hours in Germany versus Consult
80
60
40
20
0
1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014
(West) Germany
point as a “temporal shift” (Staudenmayer, Tyre, &
Perlow, 2002)—i.e., an event that changed the work
hours schedule and the temporal orientation of or-
ganizational members.
Fourth, we zoomed out again and focused on the
second phase, aiming to understand the short- and
mid-term consequences of this temporal shift. As is
usual in longitudinal research (Pentland, 1999), we
analyzed the links and feedbacks among events to
explicate the underlying generative mechanisms.
Our data on the second phase—characterized by
exponential growth—included many references to
nonlinear, positive feedback dynamics such as “a
spiral of expectations,” “herding dynamics,” and
“self-fulfilling prophecy” (see also Masuch, 1985).
By following this hunch, we identified two distinct
but interrelated processes triggered by the shift to
process-based temporal structuring (turning point 1
above). We zoomed into these processes to theorize
their logic. We found that both processes followed
the logic of positive feedback; i.e., they positively
reinforced the effects of turning point 1 described
above. This finding was further corroborated by
quantitative data from Consult’s financial reports,
which indicated an exponential growth in sales
(see Figure 3), an indicator for positive feedback
(Sterman, 2000). Hence, we conceptualized these
processes as positive feedback cycles. To deepen our
understanding of the positive feedback, we further
deciphered the micro-processes that generated it.
1825
Consult
Fifth, to understand the long-term consequences of
the two positive feedback cycles, we focused on the
third phase. Here, we zoomed in on Consult’s change
initiatives, analyzing their impetus, implemented
measures, and effects. We took a particular interest in
how and why they failed to significantly change
Consult’s mode of temporal structuring. In our data,
we found two core clusters of reasons for this failure.
First, many informants reported that most initiatives
were impossible to follow in practice because they ran
against deeply entrenched routines. We interpreted
this finding as an indicator of a locking-in of internal
temporal structuring, linking it to the second feedback
cycle. Second, data from our interviews with both
clients and consultants indicated a locking-in of client
expectations about the temporality of consultants’
work, linking it to the first feedback cycle. Hence,
we conceptualized this situation—in which Con-
sult appeared no longer able to steer its temporal
structuring—as a temporal lock-in.
Finally, we recoded our data and rewrote our case
history with the goal of constructing an analytically
structured narrative—i.e., one that tells a story framed
by the analytical concepts used to theorize our find-
ings (see also Howard-Grenville, Metzger, & Meyer,
2013). We focused this narrative explicitly on
explaining how the original temporal shift ended up
transforming and solidifying the firm’s temporal
uncoupling from societal work time rhythms. We
employed two strategies to ensure the validity and
1826 Academy of Management Journal
trustworthiness of our findings (Creswell & Miller,
2000; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). First, to counteract
retrospective bias, we triangulated between different
data sources and the interpretations of both re-
searchers (Flick, 2007). Second, the first author
conducted three “member-check” meetings in which
he presented the results of the study and discussed
them with Consult’s representatives. A fourth meet-
ing was conducted together with the second authors
and members of Consult’s HR team. This process
helped us to address some inconsistencies in the
chronology of events.
FINDINGS
Introduction to the Case: The Challenge of
Temporally Structuring Consulting Project Work
From its founding, Consult was a fast-growing and
successful management consulting firm. By the early
1980s, it belonged to the top three in the German
market. As per other strategy consulting firms, the
core task Consult has traditionally given itself is to
“help private and public clients in preemptively
tackling the challenges of global economic, techno-
logical, social and political change” (Consult busi-
ness report, 1979). For each of its clients, Consult sets
up a project team that typically has to perform three
interrelated activities. First, project teams have to
collect information about their respective client or-
ganizations and related challenges. Second, they
need to process this information to develop rigorous
recommendations about how clients should tackle
the challenges. Third, they have to feed these rec-
ommendations back to their respective clients and,
often, also facilitate the recommendations’ imple-
mentation. Whereas the first and third activities re-
quire interaction with clients, the second depends on
individual desk work and interaction within the
consulting team. Consequently, a core challenge in
temporally structuring consulting project work re-
lates to finding a viable rhythm of alternating be-
tween client–consultant interaction and individual
desk work. A viable rhythm is one that enables a team
to collect and process all the information it needs to
fulfill its task within the contracted period.
Phase I (1970–1989): Initial Conditions
Outcome-oriented temporal structuring of proj-
ect work. Consult initially followed what we call an
outcome-oriented mode of temporally structuring
project work (see Table 2, I.1 for additional data).
That is, consulting teams focused their efforts on
December
crafting and delivering a predefined project out-
come: “reports with problem solutions, [. . .] short
and concise analyses, policy papers with conceptual
recommendation, and action plans with detailed
proposals” (press article, 1979, emphasis added).
Client–consultant interaction was sparse, and seen
as a responsibility of partners:
Each client is under the care of a partner who is fully
responsible and who identifies himself personally and
professionally totally [sic] with the client’s problem:
thus, the top client executive deals directly with the
expert in the respective field and not with an anony-
mous group of several individual consultants. (Consult
business report, 1975, emphasis added)
Accordingly, lower-level consultants spent most
of their work time with analytical desk work:
When I entered the firm [in 1981], the main focus of my
work was analysis . . . analyzing the development of cost,
of sales, of different product lines. And then, based on
this retrospective analysis, we would develop sugges-
tions for the client’s strategy in the future. (#38, partner)
As already hinted in the above quotes, this out-
come orientation manifested in a weekly rhythm of
alternating between client interaction and desk work
(see Figure 2 and Table 2, I.2). That is, consultants
spent most of their time doing desk work in Consult’s
offices and occasionally traveled to clients for one or
two days a week:
Back then, our teams worked partly in our own of-
fices, partially onsite. Basically, the division of labor
was like this: [. . .]. At the client’s site, we organized
workshops, conducted interviews, collected data,
and then all the analysis was done at our own offices
in consulting teams. (#51, partner)
In some cases, it was even “common to fly out to
the client in the morning and fly back in the evening”
(#38, partner). As a result, travel costs were relatively
low, at 7% (business report, 1975). Maintaining this
rhythm—and the spatial distance from clients—
underscored consultants’ role as neutral experts (see
Table 2, II.2). For example, consultants were de-
scribed as “neutral experts who stay outside the
[client’s] hierarchy” (press article, 1979). They were
considered “more effective and more efficient in
tackling certain nonroutine managerial problems
[. . .] due to their cutting-edge knowledge and expe-
rience” (press article, 1986).
Importantly for our analysis, archival data indi-
cate that, in the early 1980s, this weekly rhythm
featured shorter work hours of between 45 and 50 a
week. Interview data referring to the late 1980s also
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg 1827

TABLE 2
Additional Data on the Dynamics in Phase I
I. Outcome-oriented temporal structuring in office projects

I.1 Outcome orientation through a focus on end results and offsite work
“The main purpose is to achieve positive and implementable results which are defined at the beginning of the consulting project.” (annual
report, 1975)
“With its results-oriented and pragmatic solutions, CONSULT meets the consulting needs of the economy and public administration.” (annual
report, 1982, emphasis added)
“In this phase, this was in the early ’80s, we simply collected the information, then processed it at home and went back to verify it.” (#43, partner)
“In the ’80s, it was like this: we did 20 interviews in the beginning, then we went to our offices, spent a lot of time with thinking over everything,
and then we delivered the results. [. . .] The client used to say, ‘I have a problem, please provide me with the solution.’ Then we tried to analyze
the problem, worked out a solution and delivered it.” (#49, partner, emphasis added)
I.2 Weekly rhythm of client–consultant interaction and desk work
“My presence in the 10 years that I worked as a consultant was one or two days a week. At that time, it was even more common to fly out to the
client in the morning and fly back in the evening. [. . .] In the early 1980s, it was primarily about analysis and . . . collecting numbers at the
client’s office, then analyzing those numbers. And you could do this [analysis] at home.” (#38, partner)
“The time onsite at the clients’ was lower than today. [...] There were many projects where we could do most work in our office. [. . .] So, it was
quite common to spend only two days a week with the client and work in the office the other three days.” (#34, partner)
“Back then, our teams worked partly in our own offices, partly onsite. Basically, the division of labor was like this: [. . .]. At the client’s site, we
organized workshops, conducted interviews, collected data, and then all the analysis was done at our own offices in consulting teams.” (#51,
partner)
“When I started working at Consult [in 1989], most teams were still working in the office. This presence thing came only later.” (#44, partner)
I.3 Shorter work hours and synchrony with societal work time norms
“Back then [in the ’80s], we used to finish work earlier than today. [...] Even when we were at the client, we would stop working around eight and
then go for dinner. [. . .] There was less speed, less availability for the client. The expectations in this respect were lower.” (#33, partner)
“In the last three years, my average working time has stayed at around 50 hours a week.” (press article, 1991, emphasis added)
“Until around 1990, most work was on conceptual projects, and this happened in the office and not at the client’s site. There were very few
implementation-oriented projects. Our motto was ‘do not work under the eyes of the client.’ The hours on those projects were much shorter.”
(#21, executive)
“We would usually go together to the cinema or to a restaurant in the evening when we were at the client’s site.” (#50, partner)
“In some rare cases, we had to work until late, maybe nine or 10. [. . .] Back then, when I left the office, I was done with work. It was never the case
that I would receive work-related calls at home.” (#38, partner)

II. Organizational outcomes

II.1 Unrealized potential for growth

“Only 25% of German companies make use of consulting services.” (press article, 1976)
“Today, there are still nonsensical psychological barriers against management consulting, e.g., when using consulting services is interpreted as
a sign of incompetence and consulting projects are hidden or played down.” (press article, 1979)
II.2 Consultants as neutral experts
“The table above shows the high percentage of executives and professionals with project leader qualification (55%) and the absence of junior
consultants (in contrast to most other consulting firms). This staff structure again expresses the high qualification which is required for typical
CONSULT consulting assignments. [. . .] With an average of ca. 6% during the past three years the fluctuation of the professional staff is
extremely low.” (annual report, 1976)
“The biggest asset of consultants is their widely documented expertise. [...] They have experience from a wide variety of companies and
industries.” (press article, 1979)
“Because they [consultants] are not routine-blinded, they are recognized as objective referees. The assessment of an objective outsider [...] helps
in solving problematic situations and overcoming rigid internal views.” (press article, 1976)

suggests that consultants worked 47 to 54 hours a week
(e.g., one or two client days with 11 to 12 hours and
three or four office days with nine to 10 hours):
The work hours were not so stressful and not so de-
manding as today. [. . .] On projects, we would usually
start at nine in the morning and work till . . . it depends
on where we worked. When I was at the client’s site,
usually until nine, sometimes 10. When I was at Con-
sult’s office––until seven or eight. This was normal. [. . .]
We used to have long lunch breaks. We would always
go to the beer garden. Today, this is completely
unthinkable. (#34, partner)
Because they spent three to four weekdays in their
respective hometowns and rarely had to engage in
late night or weekend work, Consult’s employees
experienced relative synchrony with the dominant
societal work time rhythms in this period (see Table 2,
I.3). By 1984, they worked more than the average
1828 Academy of Management Journal
40.1 hours for West Germany2, but still dramatically less
compared to today (between 70 and 80 hours a week).
Organizational outcomes. Initially, the outcome-
based mode of temporal structuring was successful
in business terms (see Table 2, II.1): sales growth
averaged 19.5% between 1979 and 1989 (own cal-
culation based on data from Consult’s business
reports). Employee turnover rates were compara-
tively low at 6% (1975) to 13% (1989). However, by
the late 1980s, some partners at Consult envisioned
that a shift to a daily rhythm of client–consultant in-
teraction could help to stimulate further and more
enduring business growth through bigger projects.
Phase II (1989–2001): The Genesis and Positive
Reinforcement of Extreme Work Hours
Turning point 1: Shift to process-oriented tem-
poral structuring in presence projects In the late
1980s, a first turning point in the temporal structur-
ing of project work occurred (see Table 3 for addi-
tional data). Several partners at Consult began to
send their teams to work on-site at the clients’ offices
five days a week in so-called “presence projects”:
Initially, [presence] was used as a sales argument. [. . .]
It was like a marketing strategy [. . .] to say [to your
client]: “We are there for you entirely and 100% on
site!” (#34, partner)
Presence projects were offered most aggressively
by Division C, which specialized in the delivery of
time-critical “crisis” projects. As the then-head of
Consult’s Division C explained, the intensified client
interaction was expected to drive business growth by
supporting the acquisition of further projects:
Every client contact is an opportunity to acquire fur-
ther projects. Every client contact strengthens the re-
lationship with the client. (#51, partner)
Despite this strategic element, most interviews
stressed that the shift to presence projects was more
emergent than deliberate; i.e., “it was not somehow
planned in advance and then implemented. It hap-
pened of its own accord” (#49, partner). Another
interviewee stressed that “it was a process, there was
no explicit managerial decision. It simply developed
over time” (#44, partner).
Presence projects featured what we conceptualize
as a process-oriented mode of temporal structuring
(see Table 3, I.1). In our data, this process orientation
2
Own calculation based on data from The German
Socio-Economic Panel.
December
manifested in a shift to “analysis-based process
consulting in the problem-solving and implementa-
tion phases” (Consult business report, 1991), marked
by “intensified client interactions” (#52, partner), the
joint development of problem solutions in “mixed
client-consultant teams” (press article, 1989), and the
“swift delivery of partial project results” (#51, partner):
The projects became bigger, and the integration with
the client became stronger. [. . .] We began to involve
the client’s employees in the project, to work together
with the client’s staff, to engage in on-site staff
coaching, guiding ... and not only deriving recom-
mendations from the analysis but also—now comes
the crucial step—how can I implement these recom-
mendations? (#38, partner, emphasis added)
Since this process orientation required consultants
to stay much “closer to the client” (#33, partner),
presence projects resulted in a new daily rhythm of
alternating between client interaction and desk work
(see Table 3, I.2). Consultants started to use most of the
regular work hours (i.e., the time between 9 a.m. and 6
p.m.) to interact with clients. They quickly learned that
these continued interactions were time-consuming:
In many projects, the consultant does not have to be
100% on site. [...] On the contrary! It only keeps me
from working when I’m there, and constantly some-
one walks by and wants to know something that is not
actually in the project. (#34, partner)
As a result, they moved their desk work to the
evenings and weekends (see Table 3, I.3):
When clients closed at 5 p.m., we began our second shift.
We basically used the nights to process everything we
needed for the next morning. [. . .] Our daily routine
was to work until 11 p.m. or midnight and then have
drinks at the hotel bar and on the next morning con-
tinue with work. (#43, partner, emphasis added)
Most consultants on presence projects worked
well over 60 hours a week (often around 70, in-
cluding the weekends). In sum, two core temporal
implications of presence projects were, first, a dra-
matically increased frequency of client interaction
and, second, an increased regularity of working long
hours. Hence, the process-oriented mode of temporal
structuring implied a new mutually dependent re-
lationship between synchrony and asynchrony:
Consultants achieved a higher degree of synchrony
in interactions with their clients during the day by
desynchronizing their desk work from the standard
working week also practiced by their clients. We now
zoom into the short- and mid-term consequences of
this temporal shift.
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg 1829

FIGURE 2
Weekly versus Daily Rhythm of Client–consultant Interaction and Desk Work
Weekly rhythm of client interaction and desk work (Phase I)

TIME MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

08:00
09:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00
14:00 Client Client Desk work Desk work Desk work
15:00 interaction interaction

16:00
17:00
18:00
19:00
20:00
21:00

Daily rhythm of client interaction and desk work (Phase II)

TIME MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

08:00
09:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
Client Client Client Client Client
13:00
interaction interaction interaction interaction interaction
14:00
15:00
16:00
17:00
18:00
19:00
20:00
Desk work Desk work Desk work Desk work Desk work
21:00
22:00
23:00
00:00

Positive feedback cycle 1: Synchronization with single consultant. In addition, they simply wanted to
clients. Initially, clients responded very positively to the see the team in their own court. (#43, partner, emphasis
increased frequency of interactions on presence projects: added)

Some clients started to really value presence because These positive responses manifested in an in-
they knew that they pay a lot of money per day for every creased demand for presence projects:
1830 Academy of Management Journal December

TABLE 3
Additional Data on the Dynamics in Phase II
I. Shift to process-oriented temporal structuring in presence projects

I.1 Process orientation through a focus on implementation and onsite work

“Practice-related and implementation-oriented solutions are developed through close association between consultant and client teams.”
(annual report, 1993, emphasis added)
“A consulting company can no longer afford to lose a client by presenting a superficial report. Today, management consultancies strive to open
the doors of a client and to work on site for as many years as possible. Meanwhile, it has become common to offer implementation-oriented
consulting, wherein the consultant supervises the implementation of the measures he has recommended.” (press article, 1996, emphasis
added)
I.2 Daily rhythm of client–consultant interaction and desk work
“During the day, we used to talk on the phone, a lot of phone calls and worked with the client, and then in the evening we would do all the brain
work, think about the things that you heard in the daily routine ... then all the production!” (#43, partner)
“Because consultants were working together with the client [during the] daytime, we often had to use the evenings and nights to prepare charts
which had to be presented to some CEO on the next day.” (#44, partner)
I.3 Long work hours and asynchrony from societal work time norms
“[When I entered the firm in 1995], we worked a lot, always worked well above the average [work hours] or that which is considered normal.
These were not work hours that were. . . let’s say... compatible with trade union agreements or other normal work hours. Not at all. It was more
between 50 and 70 hours a week [. . .], we had to do night shifts, etc. It has only gotten worse ever since I have to say.” (#17, HR)
“One hundred percent personal commitment is essential, one has to be available around the clock, work hours are no longer tied to the usual
rhythm of a five-day week––a challenge for some consultants that leads them to an early exit from the consulting career.” (press article, 2001,
emphasis added)

II. Synchronization with clients

II.1 Reducing client-side uncertainties through frequent interaction

“Clients could experience projects with a higher intensity than before because they could interact with consultants every single day. We would
work in mixed teams. This means that consultants became completely transparent in their actions. [. . .] Because I mean, before, when the
consultant simply pulled an analysis out of his hat, and the client did not have the opportunity to shape the result, this could lead to trouble.”
(#50, partner)
“The collaboration with the client was automatically more intense. It was the client’s project and not the consultants’ project. The quality was
better. The project was automatically implemented because it was the client’s employees who cocreated the results. It was their project, our
results. It was a completely different world. [...] Client satisfaction was completely different. That’s why projects became longer, from three
months to one and a half years.” (#51, partner)
II.3 Increasing the responsiveness to ad hoc client demands
“Often you think you are done [with] all your to-dos, and then the client suddenly appears and wants to have last-minute changes and then there
is this back and forth. And then you feel like ‘Oh man, actually, what we had done was quite good. But now I have to redo it because the
assistant of the CEO wants to have something else.’” (#18, manager)
“So, I had this one client, this was 1996 or 1997, it was so terrible because I wanted to go on vacation to Canada on Saturday and he had a board
meeting on Saturday. I had prepared everything for him, but then he just arrived on Friday night at 10 p.m. at my place and wanted me to go
through all the documents with him. [And] I thought, actually it is completely ridiculous that he simply shows up when I had to go leave the
next morning at eight o’clock.” (#36, partner)
II.4 Increasing the speed of results delivery
“Smart appearance, lightning-fast analysis and eloquent statements distinguish the consultant.” (press article, 1991)
“Our value proposition then was to analyze things with high precision and enormous speed and to put concepts into practice very fast.” (#43,
partner)

III. Desynchronization from societal work time norms

III.1 Hiring for asynchrony from regular work hours

“This was a success story because we simply selected young people who wanted to achieve career progress as fast as possible and we had the
opportunities to offer people something through project work and our career system.” (#42, partner)
“The initial salary will be increased. In this way, Consult [seeks] to stress its attractiveness for top consulting aspirants.” (employee magazine,
1998)
III.2 Rewarding asynchrony from regular work hours
“Whoever came last at the bar was the winner! When someone appeared at 3 a.m. and had been working beforehand, everyone else was worried
that they did not work enough. So that was the spirit back then, a lot of work, a lot of learning, a lot of action ... compared to industrial jobs or
other activities, it was just very hip to work a lot.” (#43, partner)
“We at Division C also had an impact on the culture. I used to say to my team, ‘Look, we are the marines here, or we are Formula 1 drivers.’ That
means they are only the best of the best. [. . .] And this created a strong cohesion in the entire team. I had almost no fluctuation over 10, 15 years.
And that’s why so many of my people became partners afterward. The business success came with it.” (#52, partner)
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg 1831

TABLE 3
(Continued)

III. Desynchronization from societal work time norms

III.3 Calculating for asynchrony from regular work hours

“Way too often, the projects are far too tightly calculated in relation to what one promises the client. So often you have under-sold projects to
begin with. Then you have two [options]. Either you go to overdraft, but no one wants this. So, if you don’t want to go into overdraft, then
people have to work longer. Because you only book one day per day, even though people actually work two days with 16 hours.” (#17, HR)
“We always calculated in days. Of course, the night hours were included in this calculation. But we did not make it explicit.” (#47, executive)
III.4 Scheduling for asynchrony from regular work hours
“Just how often I would receive calls after 11 p.m.! It was completely taken for granted! Phone conferences were scheduled. I mean, it is clear, during
the day, everyone is busy with their clients. So, it is really comfortable: When you are done with the client, you call your team.” (#39, HR)
“Often the project managers would only have time to check out a certain document at 10 p.m., so we have to stay there until midnight to receive
the feedback.” (#13, consultant)

What was the trigger? [. . .] People were increasingly
on site and less in their own offices . . . and this, of
course, set a spiral of expectations in motion. [. . .]
This generated demand on the market based on the
motto “When I pay for someone, I want to see him
here.” (#49, partner, emphasis added)
Responding to this demand and aiming at rapid
growth, partners at Consult increasingly started to
sell presence projects. As one partner expressed it,
“[W]hen it’s raining gold, you have to reach for a
bucket” (#43, partner). As competitor firms also in-
creasingly started to offer presence projects, a
“herding” dynamic unfolded:
This constant presence [. . .] became increasingly
popular; [. . .] it was like a herd instinct. (#38, partner,
emphasis added)
Initially confined to Division C, presence project-
s—and their process-based temporal structuring—
became the preferred mode of delivering consulting
services across the firm:
This development at Consult was strongly influenced by
[Division C]. We worked our way up to the top league
of C-type consulting. [. . .] And this had influenced the
whole culture [of Consult]. [. . .] [These projects] always
took place at the client’s site. (#34, partner)
As the share of presence projects rose throughout the
1990s (1989: 10%; 1995: 50%; 2001: 80%), Consult
experienced a period of exponential growth: yearly
sales increased eightfold between 1989 and 2001 (av-
erage yearly growth: 17.3%; see Figure 3). Consult was
growing “twice as fast as the industry” (press article,

FIGURE 3
The Exponential Growth of Consult’s Sales and Staff in Phase II
Consult’s sales (1979–2003) Consult’s staff (1979–2001)

1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001

– Sales (million DM) Employees (total) Professionals

1832 Academy of Management Journal December

1991) and continued “expanding against the industry
trend” (press article, 1994) well into the 1990s. Our
interviewees construed this growth as a consequence
of the new presence strategy:
The growth came. . . it was a competitive advantage.
We said: “What you see is what you get” and sent
people to work on site. So, it was a competitive
strategy. . . we wanted to demonstrate more presence
than our competitors. (#49, partner, emphasis added)
We interpret these developments as indicators for a
positive feedback cycle that increasingly reinforced
Consult’s daytime synchronization with clients: the in-
creased supply of presence projects triggered a higher
demand, to which Consult responded with further in-
creases in supply, which increased demand, and so
on—i.e., the “spiral of expectations” described by in-
terviewee #49 above. By implication, an ever-larger
number of projects became organized as presence proj-
ects, and the process-oriented mode of temporal struc-
turing, as well as its daytime synchrony with clients,
became dominant (see Figure 4).
Our data indicate that underpinning the positive client
responses were three microprocesses. First, by increasing
the frequency of client interactions, consultants were
able to make “themselves completely transparent” (#51,
partner), reduce client-side uncertainties, and increase
acceptance of the results of their work (see Table 3, II.1):
The acceptance of the client was better. I mean, when
both consultants and clients said “Yes, this analysis is
correct and we have to do this and that in the future,”

FIGURE 4
Synchronization with Clients (Positive Feedback Cycle 1)

Client benefits:
Reducing uncertainty,
Expanding the project Rising share of presence
scope, increasing the speed projects synchronized with
of results delivery clients

Shift to process-oriented
temporal
structuring
Positive feedback:
Increase in client
demand for presence Increase in
projects CONSULT’s
supply of presence
projects

Increased frequency
of client interaction
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
when the recommendation was supported from all sides,
it was also better for the implementation. (#33, partner,
emphasis added)
Second, the extended physical availability of
consulting teams enabled clients to expand the
project scope by assigning additional ad hoc tasks
(see Table 3, II.2), a phenomenon many interviewees
described as “scope creep”:
For the client, it was a special service to always be on site.
[. . .] And the clients, they know! They know what they can
squeeze out of consultants; [. . .] they know exactly, when I
say, “I need this and that on top,” the consultants are going
to work until 3 a.m., and I am going to get it. (#34, partner,
emphasis added)
Third, the new daily rhythm enabled consultants
to achieve a higher pace of work and deliver partial
project results faster (see Table 3, II.4):
This was a moment of surprise for many CEOs: “How
is it possible? I discuss a certain topic with you at
lunch. On the next morning, I have a deck of 20 slides
on my desk that pinpoints everything. How do you do
this?” Well, of course, we do it by working until 3 a.m.
and then waking up at 5 a.m. This is where this time
intensity of consulting came from. (#51, partner)
As evident in these examples, these micro-processes
very much depended on and reinforced consultants’
tendency to work long hours—i.e., their asynchrony
relative to the regular workweek. As we develop in the
following section, this increased regularity of long work
hours triggered a second positive feedback cycle.
Positive feedback cycle 2: Desynchronization
from societal work time norms. Our data show that
the increased regularity of long work hours created
an internal urge to align further internal organiza-
tional activities with long work hours as a regular
and recognizable temporal pattern. In a nutshell, the
more consultants were desynchronizing their desk
work from the regular workweek, the more attractive
it became for the firm’s management to align further
internal activities with the increasingly recognizable
long hours pattern, thereby reinforcing the asyn-
chrony from the regular workweek. By implication,
the more activities were being aligned, the better the
internal coordination and, as a consequence, the
more entrenched the pattern of extreme work hours
was becoming. We identified four micro-processes
building up this positive feedback cycle.
First, Consult started hiring for asynchrony from
regular work hours. Hiring for asynchrony entailed
several shifts at the interface with (new) employees
(see Table 3, III.1). Whereas Consult mainly looked for
1833
lateral hires with extensive industry experience
throughout the 1970s and 1980s, young, top-performing
graduates of so-called elite business schools became
more attractive as new hires in the 1990s:
There were new candidates on the market. [. . .] And
when you do less analysis and more process consul-
ting, you do not need the “old hands” to render an
expert opinion anymore. Rather, you need the young,
dynamic ones who move things. (#49, partner)
This shift was at least partly motivated by the bad
experience Consult had had with lateral hires under
the new regularity of long work hours:
You know, I’ve seen people—they had been successful
industry managers—standing at the photocopier at half
past three in the morning and crying, “I cannot take it
anymore, if only someone touches me, I’ll break down.”
That is, we empirically found out: If we take people who
have more than three, four, five years of industry expe-
rience or wherever, when they came to us, they could not
adjust to our pace of work anymore. (#52, partner, em-
phasis added)
Hence, Consult started hiring young “movers and
shakers” (employee magazine, 1994) who were
“ready to sacrifice some private life” (#17, HR) for
“fast career growth” (#44, partner). Hiring such
candidates enabled the firm to capitalize on the ris-
ing demand for presence projects by turning further
away from the dominant societal work time rhythms:
For us, it was clear: If you have the best projects, you
have the best people, you have the best daily rates, and
the best profit, and the best reputation. It is like a self-
fulfilling story. (#52, partner)
To complement this shift in hiring, Consult made
further adjustments at the interface with employees.
It “increased initial salaries for junior consultants”
to 100,000 DM in 1997 up from 60,000 DM in the
1980s (employee magazine, 1998; press article, 1997),
launched a new seminar program for young consul-
tants (employee magazine 1993), and started paying
for five-star hotels, first-class flights, and expensive
company cars (employee magazine 1996):
In its heyday, we started offering people a laundry
service, [. . .], free pizza after 8 p.m., and taxis for free
at 3 a.m. All these things to get rid of this extreme
workload, or at least to compensate it. (#52, partner)
By introducing such “perks,” Consult repeatedly
chose to distance itself even further from the domi-
nant societal work time rhythms and instead nor-
malized, and even positively reinforced, extreme
1834 Academy of Management Journal
work hours as an expectable and “exciting” temporal
feature of consultants’ work.
Second, actors across the firm increasingly started
to reward long work hours in both formal and in-
formal ways (see Table 3, III.2). Our informants de-
scribed this shift as the emergence of a “new”
informal culture at Consult that celebrated long work
hours as a status symbol:
Back then a culture started to emerge where people
started to say that a certain toughness is expressed by
working very long hours. [. . .] This culture became
ingrained. People started to scowl at you if you left at 8
p.m. They would make stupid jokes like, “Oh, have
you taken half a day off?” (#17, HR, emphasis added)
This culture initially resonated well with attitudes
among students at elite business schools in this period.
Throughout the 1990s, employer rankings indicated
that “consulting firms have the best chances to attract
the much sought-after top talent, followed by media
firms, banks, car manufacturers and the consumer
goods industry” (press article, 1997). Over the years,
rewarding long work hours even became ingrained in
Consult’s formal appraisal system: An item called
“willing to go the extra mile” as a measure of consul-
tants’ “commitment and behavior under stress” was
introduced in 1998 (internal HR evaluation sheet). As
many interviewees explained, this item is usually as-
sociated with the amount of time one spends at work:
In our evaluation criteria, we have an item called “is
willing to go the extra mile.” And that is how it is
interpreted: “We thought it was great how hard you
worked! One can always rely on you!” So, it is valued.
(#02, senior consultant)
By hiring for and rewarding long work hours, Con-
sult produced an increasingly homogenous, mostly
male, unmarried, young workforce. Because it had
little to synchronize with beyond work, this workforce
was ideally suited for work under conditions of in-
creasing asynchrony from regular work hours.
Third, partners increasingly started to calculate
project budgets by taking asynchrony from regular
work hours for granted (see Table 3, III.3):
When someone sells a project, this person has to think
about how many days of work he needs. So typically,
this person assumes that one consultant works 16
hours a day [. . .] This means that, already at the be-
ginning of project planning, in project calculation,
you work with assumptions about how much work a
single consultant can accomplish on a billable work-
ing day. (#39, HR, ex-consultant, emphasis added)
December
By including night hours in their calculations,
partners could reduce the price that clients paid
(i.e., the number of days) in order to improve the
chances of successfully selling a project. Including
“night shifts” was thus highly advantageous for part-
ners, yet it implied that consulting teams increasingly
had to work longer hours to compensate for the tighter
budgets. It positively reinforced a “structural ten-
dency to overwork” (#02, senior consultant).
Fourth, actors increasingly began to schedule in-
ternal activities by taking long work hours—and, by
implication, asynchrony from regular work hours—
for granted (see Table 3, III.4):
During the day, most people are somehow in some
client meetings, or many are, in particular more senior
people. [. . .] People would simply put these appoint-
ments in the evenings [. . .] because the likelihood that
people can join after 8 p.m. or after 9 p.m. is consider-
ably higher. [. . .] When it is after 8 p.m., all client ap-
pointments should be over; you can perfectly do your
internal phone calls when everyone is working till 11
p.m. anyway. (#39, HR, ex-consultant, emphasis added)
As explained in this quote, desynchronizing in-
ternal appointments from the regular work hours en-
abled actors to mutually expect that everybody would
be available in the (late) evenings and schedule ac-
cordingly. The more actors start to schedule in this
way, the more rewarding it becomes for other actors to
schedule accordingly. Thus, scheduling further rein-
forced the regularity of working long hours.
In sum, this second positive feedback cycle was
triggered by the increased regularity of long work hours
that created an urge to align further activities with the
pattern of extreme hours. By starting to hire, reward,
calculate, and schedule for asynchrony from regular
work hours, actors repeatedly detached internal ac-
tivities from dominant societal work time rhythms and,
simultaneously, increasingly embedded extreme work
hours as a core premise of temporal structuring across
the organization (see Figure 5). As a result, the entire
activity system became interconnected and organized
around this special time pattern. The resulting co-
herence made it advantageous for members to comply,
and costly for them to deviate. All measures pointed in
the same direction.
The new mode of temporally structuring project
work initially brought Consult onto a highly suc-
cessful path of exponential growth during the 1990s.
Asynchrony was paying off. However, the two feed-
back dynamics also increasingly uncoupled Consult
from societal work time rhythms. As a member of
Consult’s top management team explained:
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg 1835

FIGURE 5
Desynchronization from Societal Work Time Rhythms (Positive Feedback Cycle 2)

Urge to align internal activities

Desynchronization from hiring for asynchrony
societal work time rhythms

Shift to process-
oriented temporal
structuring
Positive feedback makes
further alignments
attractive
rewarding asynchrony,
calculating for asynchrony,
scheduling for asynchrony
Further alignments
reinforce the asynchrony
from regular work hours

Increased regularity of
long working hours

In 1996, when I entered the firm, it was clear: We work
24–7, also on weekends. [. . .] Simply asking about any
kind of work–life balance would have been the abso-
lute career killer. (#47, executive)
Whereas this increasing temporal uncoupling en-
abled Consult and its members to accrue huge eco-
nomic benefits at first, its negative side effects
became increasingly salient only over time. Despite
the perks, personnel turnover rates increased to
around 20% in the second half of the 1990s. Initially,
employee departures could be compensated by the
exponential growth in new hires throughout the
1990s (see Figure 4). Consult even introduced an
“up-or-out career system” in 1998 (employee maga-
zine, 1998), which required junior consultants to
succeed at being promoted within 18 to 24 months of
hiring or leave the firm. Such departures were ini-
tially also welcomed because alumni often arrived at
key positions in big corporations and turned from
providers to loyal purchasers of consulting services:
There is this unspoken deal between big consulting
firms and their employees: “You work here for a
couple of years, earn a lot of money, get a lot of con-
nections, and then you can do something else.” [. . .]
And these people, when they go, they go to a client.
(#28, senior consultant)
The high turnover rates were thus “integrated into
the business model” (#34, partner) and initially un-
problematic. However, they could only be sustained
1836 Academy of Management Journal December

TABLE 4
Additional Data on the Dynamics in Phase III
I. Breakdown in hiring and retention

I.1 Increasing employee turnover rates

“These high turnover rates among junior consultants/consultants and project managers show that we need to take action. [...] When these highly
skilled women leave, we are losing not just their knowledge and skills but on an economic level also our long-term investment in human
resources.” (employee magazine, 2003)
“The turnover rate is really high, hardly anyone stays more than three years. This is a huge problem; some people are really very dissatisfied and
then just leave. It always happens in waves, so we asked ourselves what the trigger was, and we said ‘OK, we need more transparency, what’s
the mood?’ And [we did this survey and found] that’s where workload came as the number one reason: clearly too high from the point of view
of most employees.” (#18, manager)
I.2 Changing attitudes toward work–life balance
“What we started to notice around 2007–2008 is that job applicants started asking for work–life balance. Or for offers and initiatives, so, on the
job market, there is this desire for more individual time or more private life. [...] This never used to happen in the past! Because back then
people would think ‘oh, they are just going to let me go right away,’ so this used to be a nonissue for young, ambitious consultants in the past.”
(#01, HR)
“Career? Yes, but not at any price. Friends, family, and leisure, are just as important. Generation Y mixes up the world of work. This creates a
huge challenge for the management consulting industry, previously known for its poor work–life balance.” (press article, 2014)
I.3 Increasing strategic importance of retention
“It has become harder to sell junior consultants. This used not to be a problem in the 1990s. [...] Today, they are virtually not in demand among
some clients.” (#33, partner)
“I think we will need more lateral hires, coming from the industry, with the respective industry experience, who are taken more seriously by the
client. The problem is that these people, they are perhaps between 35 and 40 years or maybe even 45 and 50 years old. And they simply say: ‘I
don’t want to be part of this circus anymore! I am not working until 2 am!’ So, we will have to design new work time models for those people.
So, I think, the business model is going to move away from [...] this model of squeezing out highly intelligent people who are willing to work a
lot. This model, I think, will not survive and there will have to be another model, but this would require different frameworks.” (#17, HR)

II. Locking in of internal temporal structuring

II.1 Rigid pattern of extreme work hours and asynchrony from societal work time norms
“But there is this culture, if you leave at 10 p.m., people ask themselves, ‘Doesn’t he have enough work to do? Doesn’t he have internal tasks? If he
doesn’t, then I could give him some more tasks because he is not working at full capacity.’” (#15, manager)
“At Consult, [. . .] nobody leaves the office, at least not on my projects... before 11 p.m. or midnight. That’s just normal.” (#35, senior consultant)
II.2 Perception of irreversibility
“The question is always what aspects of our business model can be changed? [. . .] We cannot change the time regime because we are the ones
who work more, who work harder.” (#11, partner)
“I just cannot imagine a consultant working only three days a week. Then, we will no longer be able to deliver the necessary quality of work. [...]
It would mean giving up our USP [unique selling proposition], which is strongly based on ... [our capacity to] solve problems very fast and be
available for the client 100%.” (#29, manager)
II.3 New forms of temporal structuring expected to cause internal disturbances
“To coordinate is much more complex when you have to take into consideration: ‘Ah, this person has an appointment here, that person has an
appointment there!’ [. . .] If you start collecting individual time preferences, then the appointments move, client appointments can move,
someone is not back on time from their appointment, and so on. You simply get more and more problems.” (#39, HR, ex-consultant)
“For staffing, if the project manager is not there, you will have to deal with stuff like: Who represents whom? [. . .] Whereas beforehand, it was
easy: a five-person team is always available! It is the same if you want to allow a team member to have a free evening: you have to plan it! This
takes time!” (#40, consultant)

III. Locked-in temporality of client–consultant interaction

III.1 Rigid expectations about the frequency of client–consultant interaction

“Because the topic of visibility to the client . . . so in Germany, we have the culture ‘I only trust what I see,’ so the client actually expects that you
work very, very closely with him, also fits our business model, because it is a lot about implementation. So, you can’t just say, ‘OK, tomorrow
morning, I am leaving.’” (#12, partner)
“Only two days a week at the client’s site is really impossible because then the results will be bad. [. . .] If I go to the client and tell him, ‘From
tomorrow on, I will work in a different way,’ then he would be disturbed. The client would be disturbed, if one says, ‘OK today we all do Office
Day.’ He wants to see what he spends his money on.” (#47, executive)
III.2 Valorization of asynchrony at the interface with clients
“Our clients do not pay so much money for consultants because they receive value added in terms of content. Rather, they do it because this
value is created in well beyond eight hours a day.” (#19, partner)
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg 1837

TABLE 4
(Continued)

III. Locked-in temporality of client–consultant interaction

“How do you justify the consultant’s much higher daily rate in comparison [to] the client’s own employees, who could actually do the same job?
You can do that by being particularly clever, by having special prior knowledge and expertise, or you can do it by giving full throttle. That’s
what we do.” (#09, manager)
III.3 Competitive pressure to overperform
“In other words, the good years are over, long over, they have been over since the crisis of 2007–2008 at the latest. And all consulting firms who
are growing fast now, they’re mainly buying market share by going down with their prices, and then offering projects at such low prices that it
messes up the entire industry.” (#15, manager)
“And competition becomes a question of time, because what you typically do is to calculate the project budget on the tighter side in order to win
in a competitive situation, because your offer was cheaper.” (#12, partner)

as long as Consult was able to compensate them by
hiring new consultants and providing perks. This,
however, changed in phase III.
Phase III (2001–2015): Temporal Lock-In
Turning point 2: Breakdown in hiring and
retention. In the early 2000s, a second turning point
occurred: Economic growth stagnated, and Consult
began to experience serious problems at the interface
with its current and potential employees (see Table 4
for additional data). More specifically, the firm ex-
perienced a breakdown in hiring and retaining
enough young, highly qualified employees:
Management consulting [. . .] has lost a lot of its
glamour in the perception of university graduates.
That is the case because, in the last 10 years, [. . .] the
[traditional] industry has significantly caught up in
terms of attractive offers for very high-performing
university graduates. (#19, partner)
Many employees started to leave the firm faster;
the average retention period declined from 4.5 years
throughout the 1990s to approximately 2.5 years,
well below the goal of five to six years (see Table 4,
I.1). There were also “more and more cases of burn-
out” (#01, HR, ex-consultant). Consult was “barely
able to hire talented new people” (#35, senior con-
sultant) to compensate the departures. Moreover,
stagnating economic growth made it increasingly
difficult to keep all the perks in place. Exit interviews
indicated that the mounting experiences of asyn-
chrony among employees were the primary reason
for the increased turnover (see Table 4, I.2):
In the exit interviews, I have a cluster called “personal
reasons.” For one thing, it includes health issues, and
for another, the disconnection from cultural, social,
and other leisure activities. So, this topic, “personal
reasons,” it is growing! [. . .] Every year, it grows more
and more! (#17, HR, emphasis added)
Interviewees reported that “the damage is partic-
ularly high when people above the senior consultant
level decide to leave the company simply because
they are dissatisfied with their work hours” (#19,
partner). Retaining senior consultants was important
because clients were “increasingly unwilling to pay
for juniors” (#47, executive, see Table 4, I.3). How-
ever, it was also difficult:
In the past, there were these 21 or 22 year olds who had
no obligations outside of work. Now, it has become more
and more important to keep people. [. . .] There is a clear
trend to staff projects with more senior people. And
these are usually people who care for their lives outside
of work. I have a wife and a daughter, and that makes a
huge difference to me. (#22, senior consultant)
Many actors at Consult observed the breakdown in
hiring and retention and interpreted it as a sign that
Consult’s uncoupling from regular work hours was
becoming a problem:
This topic, working time [. . .] it is one of the factors that
can put the entire business model of consulting in
question. Because if we do not manage to recruit the best
of the best, because we have such a working time regime,
can we still demand such high prices for our services?
No! Because we cannot deliver the best services any-
more! [. . .] If we do not somehow come to grips with this
topic of work hours and work–life balance, in the long
term, it is a huge danger for the business model of con-
sulting. (#02, senior consultant, emphasis added)
Below, we describe how Consult—in particular,
its HR managers—attempted to address these prob-
lems by launching several work–life initiatives.
Suddenly, increasing the synchrony with the stan-
dard working week appeared to be an attractive op-
tion. However, abandoning the deeply entrenched
1838 Academy of Management Journal December

TABLE 5
Summary of Consult’s Change Initiatives
1: Family-friendliness certificate 2: Work–life balance rules 3: Changing work culture

Initiated by HR (2002) Consultants or subunit management Consultants or subunit management

Aim “To tap novel talent pools, especially
women” (HR head)
Measures or rules Part-time work in all areas of the firm
(excerpts) Home office
Childcare support
Integration of family-friendliness in
HR appraisal and feedback
processes
Results “After eight years, we realized that
our approach seems to lead to a
dead end [. . .] our aims remain the
same, but our tools are not
working.” (#04, HR)
“I mean. . . the original aim, to
increase the percentage of women
. . . we couldn’t achieve it.” (#01,
HR)
(2012)
“To tackle the persisting problems
and challenges with workload”
(subunit HR head)
Biweekly “pulse check”
Daily working time must not exceed
12 hours
No internal meetings or calls after
10 p.m.
No e-mail correspondence on
weekends or public holidays
“It was received very positively at the
beginning, then you do it for four
weeks, and then it breaks down
again.” (#14, manager)
“In the beginning, we all tried very,
very hard to follow the new rules,
and it was received very positively.
But then . . . you fall back very, very
fast into old routines. There are
routines that have developed over
a very long time.” (#19, partner)
(2013)
“The aim was to change our working
culture”(subunit head)
Biweekly “pulse check”
At least one evening a week available
for nonwork activities
No calls or meetings before 8 a.m. and
after 9:30 p.m.
Consultants’ workload should be
kept at acceptable levels (, 12 hrs
per day)
“We’ve got these rules, but nothing
changes.” (#02, consultant)
“You can only use your weekends
to catch up on sleep.” (internal
documents)
“It’s just writing on the wall.”
(#41, partner)

process-based mode of temporal structuring turned
out more difficult than expected.
Locking-in of internal temporal structuring.
Consult launched several deliberate attempts to
change the pattern of extreme work hours, yet all those
attempts failed to achieve sustainable change (see
Table 5). We interpreted these repeated failures—and
the implied counterfactual maintenance of an un-
desirable time pattern—as an indicator for a locking-
in of internal temporal structuring.
The first wave of company-wide change efforts
began as early as 2001. In the first step, a sabbatical
program was launched. It enabled consultants to take
up to 12 months off in between projects, but had little
effect on temporal structuring within projects:
Sabbaticals are not really a workload measure for me,
because they do not really address the problem at its
roots. They just enable you to take a break, if you feel
that your batteries are completely empty, so to speak.
(#09, manager)
A company-wide weekly “office day”—which was
also common among competitors—was introduced
in 2001. It limited the number of nights consultants
had to spend away from home to three per week
(i.e., between Monday and Thursday). Eventually, a
more comprehensive “family friendliness” certifi-
cation program was designed and launched by the
firm’s HR department to “attract, retain, and develop
women” (employee magazine, February 2003). The
government-sponsored certification program entailed
various additional work–life measures, such as flexi-
ble working time models, home office, teleworking,
child care support, and coaching for work–life bal-
ance. Despite initial enthusiasm about the initiative
and strong support from the top management and HR
department, most employees were quickly disap-
pointed. One interviewee described the certifica-
tion as “window dressing” (#41, partner). Another
explained that most measures “simply do not work
when you are on a project” (#06, partner). In an in-
ternal survey conducted in 2011 in Consult’s argu-
ably “most relaxed” (#13, consultant) subunit, 71%
reported regularly working more than 60 hours a
week, and 76% worked on weekends at least once
a month. These results indicate that extreme work
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
hours persisted despite the change initiative (see
Table 4, II.1). Consult’s head of HR also acknowl-
edged that the initiative had failed to achieve the
results he had hoped for despite the continuing
pressure for change:
We are starting to realize now, eight years later, that our
approach—not the topic but the approach we have
followed to address this topic—has led us into a dead
end. [. . .] Our goals remain the same, but we really need
to change the instruments we have been using to reach
them. (#04, HR, ex-consultant, emphasis added)
Two further, and more explicit, attempts to change
the temporal structuring of project work were
launched between 2012 and 2013 in two of the most
successful organizational subunits (Divisions A and
B), known for their hardworking culture. Both ini-
tiatives introduced a set of “work–life balance rules”
and a biweekly online “pulse check” tool to monitor
rule compliance. The management of each subunit
launched the initiatives after experiencing periods of
record sick leave and turnover rates: in Division A,
half of the consultants left the company within less
than a year. Teams of volunteers developed the
rules bottom-up. The new rules explicitly intervened
in the temporal structuring of project work. For in-
stance, they imposed a limit on daily work hours (not
more than 12 hours) and regulated travel time and
consultants’ availability for phone calls (see Table 5).
Initially, consultants and partners received both
initiatives with widespread enthusiasm. However,
soon thereafter, problems started to emerge. The
initial ardor turned into disappointment. The results
of the pulse check included frequent complaints
about “little sleep,” “severely limited private life,”
and “continuous nightshifts” (internal documents).
The aggregate results for 2013 from Division B
showed that over 70% of consulting teams failed to
follow the rules related to the length of work hours,
flexible evenings, and travel times (see Table 5). Most
informants admitted that the rules did not result in
actual change: “We have these rules, but we do not
experience that anything is changing!” an angry
project manager commented informally.
Despite the inclination for change, the established
temporal patterns overruled the new measures:
As we introduced it, and we all tried very hard to
follow the rules, it was received really positively. But
then, you fall back into old routines very, very quickly.
Because there are routines, they have developed over
a long period of time and have become very deeply
ingrained. (#12, partner, emphasis added)
1839
All seven members of Division A whom we inter-
viewed were perplexed by the difficulties in imple-
menting their initiative. One partner commented:
We have now reached a point where we need to be
self-critical, especially given our extremely high
workload at the moment, and say: “OK, we have given
ourselves these rules. Why on earth is it so difficult to
follow them?” (#10, consultant)
However, almost two years after its introduction,
the initiative was widely recognized as a failure:
I wouldn’t say they are completely forgotten, but [the
rules] are simply ignored. Everybody keeps them
somewhere at the back of their minds, but no one
follows them. (#15, manager)
In sum, our data suggest that actors experienced the
repeated failures of the initiatives as an indicator of the
irreversibility of Consult’s mode of internal temporal
structuring (see Table 4, II.2). The initiatives encoun-
tered a strong internal pressure to maintain the pattern
of extreme work hours. Employees experienced this
pressure as resulting from the web of practices—such
as hiring, rewarding, scheduling, and calculating for
asynchrony—that remained untouched from the new
initiatives (see also Table 4, II.3):
If you change such a crucial parameter—namely, how
many hours people are allowed to work a day—this
would destroy all the projects, it would destroy all the
project planning that was done. For all ongoing proj-
ects, for all offers that are out there! That would be
quite a catastrophe if it were introduced from one day
to the next. (#39, HR, ex-manager)
In addition, partners—as a powerful core group
within the firm—played an ambiguous role. On the one
hand, they supported the initiatives. On the other hand,
they appeared unwilling to redesign the complex in-
ternal structural arrangement radically. In their eyes, the
process-oriented mode of temporal structuring had be-
come the core aspect of consulting valued by clients:
Today, consulting sells as a product the temporal
availability of people with a certain competence profile.
It is all about the promise to be able to mobilize people
with a certain competence profile on a short-term basis.
In other words, you sell availability. (#41, partner)
As a result, they often initiated changes and op-
posed them at the same time. As a senior partner
explained concerning the so-called “Office Fridays:”
Partner: At some point during the last 10 years, we
introduced the Office Friday. [. . .] It was not a popular
measure at all. Among consultants of course it was,
but not among partners.
1840 Academy of Management Journal
Interviewer: Why not?
Partner: Because they had to explain to their clients “we
won’t be here on Fridays.” Then there was a danger that
the client would say, “what are you doing on Friday? I
am paying you for Fridays as well! Why are you not
here?” [. . .] The partners think “Why should I do this?
What do they want to do at the office, anyway? They
should sit with the client!” Partners have the interest to
cut a good figure in front of the client. They do not want
to get caught up in discussions about what their people
are actually doing. (#34, partner, emphasis added)
This quote illustrates how partners feared to openly
communicate the Office Day initiative to clients, and
preferred to stick to the established pattern of working
on-site five days a week. As a result, by 2014 only
about a third of Consult’s projects adhered to the
company-wide Office Day rule. This failure shows
how partners had become dependent on maintaining
daytime synchrony vis-à-vis their clients (i.e., having
their teams work five days a week on-site) even though
this synchrony depended on an increasingly prob-
lematic nighttime asynchrony from societal work time
rhythms. This observation leads us to a further stabi-
lizing factor that emerged from our data.
Locked-in temporality of client–consultant
interactions. Our data show that, as a result of the
first positive feedback cycle described above, expecta-
tions about the temporality of client–consultant in-
teractions also became locked in (see Table 4, III.1). This
locking-in manifested in three ways in our data. First,
consultants reported that over time a “shared daily rou-
tine” (#12, partner) emerged at the interface with clients:
On typical consulting projects, you work together not
with a single contact person; you work with tens of
them! And those people, they have their own particu-
lar working times spread throughout the day. And you
somehow have to cover and coordinate with the one
who starts very early but also leaves early. But you have
to do the same with the one who starts late and leaves
very late. So, this means that your own working time, or
your availability, is, in fact, the maximum of these time
spans. (#24, senior consultant, emphasis added)
As explained in this quote, this shared daily rou-
tine exerted a pressure for consistently staying in
sync with clients during the daytime and responding
to their demands by working late at night. As one
consultant further explained, clients simply ex-
pected consultants to react on a short-term basis:
Usually, top managers and CEOs are not used to
[adapting] to consultants, such as “Oh, I know that the
consultants are here on Wednesdays at 3 p.m., that’s
December
when we have our meeting.” It’s the other way around.
Clients want to be able to call the consultants and
tell them “Come to my office, I want to talk to you” at
all times. So, this access, this continuous availability,
it is somehow ingrained in the brains of clients. (#23,
consultant, emphasis added)
Second, by staying continuously in sync with cli-
ents during the day, consultants consolidated cli-
ents’ definitions of the value of consulting services
and the implied role of consultants (see Table 4,
III.2). The following quote from an interview with a
C-level client representative at a big telecommuni-
cations company illustrates how clients expect the
benefits of asynchrony from regular work hours—
higher speed and prolonged availability—as a core
distinguishing feature of consulting:
When I buy consulting, in particular, from the Big
Three3, I simply expect that the results arrive fast and
smooth. [. . .] It simply belongs to the sales prospectus.
You buy a high-performance engine that can work
longer on high rotational speed than the engines
you’ve got in your own garage. [. . .] [Consulting firms]
do not make this explicit, but good consultants are
always available 24–7. (#53, client, telecommunica-
tions, emphasis added)
Another client explicitly mentioned expecting
consultants to synchronize at daytime and work
asynchronously at night:
There is this hidden agreement: During the day, the
consultant has many workshops and meetings with
the client, between nine and five or six o’clock and
when the client goes home—maybe at six or seven or
eight—the consultants are in the situation that they
have to catch up with all their other tasks to be pre-
pared for the next day. [. . .] This means that they work
until 11, 12 or sometimes three o’clock at night. (#54,
client, consumer goods)
Third, in addition to these interactive dynamics at
the interface with clients, competition became an ex-
ternal factor that maintained the locked-in temporal-
ity of client–consultant interactions (see Table 4, III.3).
Clients increasingly started to perceive consulting
services as an interchangeable commodity. This in-
creased the price-driven competition among strategy
consulting firms, manifesting in falling prices:
The big turning point was 2000–2001 as the dot-com
bubble burst. [. . .] Prices have been declining since
2001, with a few exceptions. Declining! That means
3
The Big Three refers to the top three consulting firms in
the German market in terms of market share.
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
that the price point at which we offer our services as
strategy consultants is falling. (#34, partner)
As one partner explained, price-driven competition
directly reinforced the pressure to work long hours:
Our competitors [. . .] force us to make concessions in some
way or another. And then the client puts pressure on us too
so that we just have to sell a project on a low budget and
then see how to deal with it. [. . .] Of course, this automat-
ically leads to additional workload. The colleagues have to
multiply their working time. (#03, partner)
Furthermore, actors expected that—due to competi-
tive pressure—clients are likely to go to a competitor
firm if Consult changed its mode of temporally struc-
turing project work:
There is this market squeeze. Especially among elite
strategy consulting firms. There is [Competitor 1],
[Competitor 2], and us. [...] And the clients, they know
this and they abuse it. They say “If you don’t do it, I
can call the [competitor] guy. I know he is as desperate
as you are and he’ll do it.” (#31, manager)
In sum, Consult experienced not only internal
but also external—client-side and competitive—
pressure to maintain its process-based mode of tem-
poral structuring and the implied temporal uncoupling
from societal time norms. As a result, Consult in-
creasingly became torn between the conflicting de-
mands of clients, on the one hand, and employees, on
the other:
On the one hand, we receive this price pressure from
the market. And, on the other, we have the demands of
our employees, who want more time, who no longer
want to work as it used to be typical in the past. [. . .]
How can we strike a balance? Clients want more for
less money; [. . .] how can we deliver this without
letting our people down? (#39, HR, ex-consultant)
However, the locking-in of internal temporal struc-
turing and the temporality of client–consultant inter-
actions prevented Consult from adequately addressing
this tension. The firm was no longer able to change its
mode of temporal structuring. It became bound to
maintain an unsustainably high degree of temporal
uncoupling from societal work time rhythms.
DISCUSSION: TEMPORAL UNCOUPLING AS A
NEW WAY OF SEEING
In this paper, we asked why and how extreme work
hours persist in a state of asynchrony relative to societal
work time rhythms. By tracing the evolution of tem-
poral patterns at Consult over more than 40 years, we
1841
offered a rare longitudinal examination of extreme
work hours, as well as temporal structuring. Our core
finding—and the answer to our research question—
is that extreme work hours persisted because two
positive feedback dynamics locked in both internal
temporal structuring and expectations about the
temporality of client–consultant interactions. To-
gether, these dynamics brought about and consoli-
dated an internal temporal order that increasingly
uncoupled from societal work time rhythms. To in-
tegrate our findings, we developed a process model
of temporal uncoupling from societal work time
rhythms (see Figure 6).
Our model differentiates three phases. In Phase I, its
starting point is the process of organizational temporal
structuring (e.g., Orlikowski & Yates, 2002; Rowell et al.,
2016). Here, temporal uncoupling enabled us to see how
Consult could initially change its mode of temporal
structuring without adaptively synchronizing with an
environmental change. Instead, it enacted an entirely
new rhythm that—contrary to what entrainment theory
would argue—did not “match” the predominant socie-
tal work time rhythms at the time; it was different from
them. In fact, there was no pre-existing rhythm—such as
a client-side expectation to work extreme hours on
site—to synchronize with. Clients did not expect such a
shift; at first, they were even surprised by it. Consult’s
actions created and incrementally consolidated a
preference for on-site availability and, by implica-
tion, extreme work hours among clients. Based on
this observation—which cannot be adequately
accounted for from an entrainment lens that pre-
supposes pre-existing Zeitgebers—we theorize
that temporally uncoupled organizations can se-
lect which external rhythms to relate to, and how.
Thus, they can enact their own internal temporal
structures that do not necessarily match anything
in their environments.
Phase II of our model describes how such selec-
tions constitute temporal shifts that can reconfigure
organizational temporality in complex ways. That is,
due to the interdependencies among different ac-
tivities in organizational systems (Luhmann, 2018),
shifts in the temporality of one activity are likely to
have (sometimes disproportionate) effects on the
temporality of other activities. In our case, increasing
the frequency of client interactions implied moving
the temporal location of desk work to evenings and
weekends. Over time, this initially small temporal
shift radically reconfigured Consult’s temporality
and its temporal relations to its environment. It did
so by triggering two mutually dependent cycles of
positive feedback: a cycle of daytime synchronization
1842 Academy of Management Journal December

FIGURE 6
A Process Model of Temporal Uncoupling from Societal Work Time Rhythms

Positive feedback cycle 1: Synchronization with clients (see Figure 4)

+
over time…
Locked-in temporality
Increased frequency of External positive
of client interactions
initiates client interaction feedback
+

exponential growth maintains

Temporal shift: Temporal lock-in:

Increasing temporal uncoupling from societal work time norms
Outcome-oriented Process-oriented Persistent temporal
Societal – rising share of presence projects
temporal structuring in temporal uncoupling from
work time rhythms – increasing embeddedness in the organization
office projects structuring in societal work time
presence projects rhythms

Organizational increasing embeddedness maintains

temporal structuring
+
initiates
Increased regularity of Locking-in
Internal positive feedback
long work hours of internal temporal
+ over time… structuring
Positive feedback cycle 2: De-synchronization from regular work hours
(see Figure 5)
increasing difference between organizational
and societal work time rhythms

Phase I: Initial conditions Phase II: Positive reinforcement Phase III: Temporal lock-in t

with clients and a cycle of desynchronization from own and escalate, thereby increasingly narrowing
societal work time rhythms. This new configuration the organizational repertoire of temporal structures.
of synchrony and asynchrony, in turn, enabled Finally, Phase III of our model illustrates how the
Consult to accrue positive outcomes (exponential longer-term dynamics of temporal structuring can,
growth) by offering additional new benefits to clients when driven by positive feedback, ultimately lead to
(positive feedback cycle 1). Over time, initial suc- a temporal lock-in. We define a temporal lock-in as
cesses with this new mode of temporal structuring the counterfactual maintenance of temporal struc-
caused various interdependent organizational tures in light of environmental pressure for change
activities to follow suit and align with the new and intentional change efforts. In our case, the or-
schedule (positive feedback cycle 2). Because the ganization became dependent on maintaining its
alignment of elements reinforced and supported mode of temporal structuring even when this im-
Consult’s growth, it created incentives to align fur- plied mounting inefficiencies in terms of employee
ther elements. The dynamics of this mechanism attrition and burnout (but not necessarily in terms of
closely resemble what has become known as the economic returns). This dependence was evident in
“logic of complementarities” (Kremser & Schreyögg, Phase III, when Consult suddenly started to experi-
2016; Milgrom & Roberts, 1990). Two elements are ence adverse effects associated with its uncoupled
complementary when “they mutually increase their temporality but, due to both internal and external
benefit [. . .] and/or mutually reduce their disadvan- stabilizing forces, was unable to dislodge. Therefore,
tages or costs” (Schmidt & Spindler, 2002: 319). The we conclude that positive feedback is a critical
cumulative effects of these processes increasingly mechanism that explains how temporal uncoupling
uncoupled Consult’s temporality from societal work from societal work time rhythms can become posi-
time norms. Therefore, we theorize that an organi- tively reinforced and ultimately persistent. In sum,
zation’s degree of temporal uncoupling is modulated our model suggests that the persistence of extreme
by processes of (de)synchronization with various work hours can be seen as a fundamentally temporal
external rhythms. Under conditions of positive problem: an organizational inability to dislodge from
feedback, these processes can take on a life of their a temporal lock-in.
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH
ON ORGANIZATIONAL TEMPORALITY AND
EXTREME WORK HOURS
By advancing temporal uncoupling as a new way
of seeing, our research makes two major contribu-
tions. First, it provides a novel perspective on tem-
poral structuring as an alternative to the dominant
entrainment lens. Second, this perspective enabled
us to identify a new reason for the puzzling persis-
tence of extreme work hours: temporal lock-in.
Temporal Uncoupling as a New Lens on
Temporal Structuring
Our study deepens current understandings of tem-
poral structuring by offering temporal uncoupling as an
alternative to the predominant view of entrainment
(e.g., Ancona & Chong, 1996; Pérez-Nordtvedt et al.,
2008). Through the entrainment lens, we see organi-
zations as time takers that adapt to an external Zeitgeber
by “matching” its rhythm. Our perspective advances a
different logic: organizations temporally uncouple and
thereby create a scope of choice to structure their tem-
porality according to their own internal premises and
goals. They are time makers rather than time takers. We
thus see temporal structuring as a process of creating
and maintaining a temporal difference to an environ-
ment, not a process of adaptation to environmental
temporal structures, as argued by prior research. In
some cases, organizations might choose to increase this
difference (e.g., by desynchronizing from a rhythm), in
other cases to reduce it (e.g., by synchronizing with a
rhythm). However, they can never fully eliminate it.
From this perspective, synchronization is the result of a
choice instead of enforced adaptation: different parts of
the environment provide information on different
rhythms, while organizations have to select whether
and how to relate to these rhythms.
This lens enabled us to overcome entrainment’s
one-sided focus on synchronization and to bring the
interplay of synchrony and asynchrony into view. Our
analysis revealed how Consult—at least initially—
successfully enacted and maintained temporal relations
that involved a complex configuration of synchrony
with some parts of the environment (clients and later
also competitors) and asynchrony with others (societal
work time rhythms). By elucidating this interplay, our
study reveals that the relationship between synchrony
and asynchrony is considerably more complex than
previously assumed. Through the entrainment lens,
synchrony appears as a purely positive, cost-free state
of harmony with external rhythms. By contrast, we
1843
showed that synchrony sometimes comes at a price:
decisions to synchronize with one rhythm can make
desynchronizing from other equally important rhythms
necessary. Maintaining synchrony with one rhythm
can thus depend on maintaining asynchrony from an-
other. In our case, the decision to increase synchrony
with clients made it necessary to desynchronize from
societal work time, and vice-versa. These insights raise
the important question of whether synchrony and
asynchrony can and should be conceptualized as in-
terdependent dimensions that co-constitute each other:
Is it at all possible to synchronize with one rhythm
without simultaneously desynchronizing from an-
other? While beyond the scope of our study, such a
conceptualization might imply that organizations
face an important trade-off between the rhythms
from and with which they (de)synchronize.
An important implication of this insight is that both
synchrony and asynchrony need to be theorized as
carrying their own distinct advantages and disadvan-
tages for organizations and their members. We found
that asynchrony can be beneficial as it grants organi-
zations latitude to enact novel forms of temporal
structuring associated with exceptional economic
benefits. However, we also found that it generated ad-
verse side effects, in particular for organizational
members who had to carry the personal cost of working
extreme hours. Similarly, the daytime synchrony with
clients was associated with benefits at first, but turned
into a barrier for change when it increasingly consoli-
dated clients’ expectations about onsite availability;
eventually, it reduced the organization’s latitude to
steer its temporal structuring. These findings suggest
that past successes are no guarantee that established
temporal relations will remain viable forever. Radical
environmental shifts, as the one Consult experienced
at the interface with its employees in Phase III, are
likely to reconfigure organizational preferences for (a)
synchrony in relation to various activities and rhythms.
Organizations therefore need to choose carefully which
rhythms they relate to and how, in particular given
that past choices to synchronize with one rhythm—
and to simultaneously desynchronize from another—
can be difficult to reverse and might even result in a
temporal lock-in.
Temporal Lock-In as a Novel Explanation of
Extreme Work Hours and their Persistence
Our new way of seeing enabled us to identify a
previously unrecognized reason for the puzzling
persistence of extreme work hours: temporal lock-in.
Prior studies have primarily focused on exogenous
1844 Academy of Management Journal
barriers to changing extreme work hours, such as
those related to culture (e.g., Padavic et al., 2019; Reid,
2015), technology (e.g., Mazmanian et al., 2013), and
power (e.g., Michel, 2011). The notion of temporal
lock-in extends this line of research by deepening our
understanding of the endogenous temporal dynamics
that constitute and maintain them as persistent pat-
terns. Whereas prior conceptual work has occasion-
ally noted that “settled temporal arrangements can be
very difficult to change” (e.g., Bluedorn & Waller,
2006: 384), the details of this argument have remained
unclear. Most practitioners and scholars have instead
assumed that they are “always potentially malleable”
(Reinecke & Ansari, 2015: 640).
By contrast, our study offers a rare empirical ex-
amination of how the temporal structuring of entire
organizations can become locked in as the result of
small temporal shifts that initiate positive feedback.
Our study shows how integrating positive feedback
into our theorizing explains how a seemingly small
shift in the temporal structuring of work can become
excessively reinforced (e.g., from regular to extreme
work hours) and how these changes can persist even
when they are no longer desired. Positive feedback
constitutes a feature of the endogenous dynamics
of temporal structuring, rather than an exogenous
reinforcing force. Though set in motion by actors
themselves, over time positive feedback dynamics
increasingly slip out of their sphere of influence and
take on a life of their own. Eventually, they turn con-
tingencies (e.g., small temporal shifts) into necessities
(e.g., rigid temporal arrangements). In our case, we
showed how positive feedback dramatically nar-
rowed the range of temporal options available for the
organization. Positive feedback thus explains how,
over time, organizations can become unable to pro-
actively shape their own temporality, as well as their
temporal relations to their environments.
Two types of positive feedback proved particularly
important for explaining the temporal lock-in of ex-
treme work hours. First, external positive feedback—in
terms of economic returns—at the interface with clients
consolidated and eventually locked in expectations
about the temporality of client–consultant in-
teractions. Second, internal positive feedback—in
terms of complementarity effects—enlisted an ever-
larger number of originally unrelated activities in the
reinforcement and reproduction of extreme work
hours. As a result, the temporal lock-in of extreme
work hours—and its maintenance—extended not only
across the entire organizational system, but also to the
interactive dynamics with other systems in the envi-
ronment. Organizations that find themselves in such a
December
lock-in become bound to reproduce a specific mode of
temporal structuring even though they might experi-
ence strong environmental pressure for change. Because
their underlying dynamics are hardly visible, over-
coming such temporal lock-ins constitutes a particularly
insidious barrier to change. It would require firms to
undergo complex system-level change—and, in the case
at issue here, even to rethink their business models.
Practical Implications for Changing Extreme
Work Hours
Our paper reveals the important role of temporal-
ity and the dynamics of temporal lock-in as un-
derappreciated barriers to changing extreme work
hours. These barriers call for a new type of change
efforts. Such efforts can no longer be conceived as
piecemeal HR measures—as is often the case—but
rather must be comprehensive strategic efforts to
transform the rigid modes of temporal structuring.
The affected organizations need to resolve a fundamental
problem: What should replace the current set of temporal
relations to the organizational environment—in this
case, to clients? For Consult, abandoning these re-
lations would imply redefining its business model,
including key processes, a new profit formula, and a
new value proposition. Currently, the business
model is inextricably intertwined with the presence
strategy and its implied mode of temporal structur-
ing. As demonstrated in our analysis, changing sin-
gle elements of a tightly knit temporal arrangement is
bound to fail. Sustainable change, instead, depends
on transforming the entire temporal arrangement or
creating a new one that is no longer premised on ex-
treme work hours. Such a radical redefinition, how-
ever, would have unforeseeable consequences for the
firm’s survival in the market. As long as competitors
do not follow suit, a change in the process orientation
and the resulting long work hours is very risky.
What could such a radical change look like? One
approach could entail experimenting with new types
of consulting services that are no longer premised on
extreme work hours. Importantly, this approach is
more likely to succeed if it occurs in separate busi-
ness units that are allowed to develop independently
of the dominant temporal arrangement of their par-
ent organization. A core challenge will be to redefine
the value of consulting in nontemporal terms—
i.e., as no longer derived from the pace of consul-
tants’ work and their availability. Another approach
might aim at reducing the risk by shifting the locus of
change from the single firm to the field of elite consul-
ting itself, aiming for a collective, interorganizational
2019 Blagoev and Schreyögg
effort in transforming locked-in patterns of extreme
work hours. The crucial challenge here would be
competition: Are the competitors willing and able to
collaborate in one area (changing extreme work
hours) while competing in others? In both cases, the
change should also entail the careful formation of an
alternative mode of temporal structuring. This could
be achieved, for example, by designing and imple-
menting collective time management routines that
keep extreme work hours in check. Such routines
could include scoping projects for an expectable and
tolerable workload, monitoring and preventing “scope
creep,” or staffing projects by taking individual work
time preferences into account. Some new and very
successful entrants into the consulting market—such as
the Danish firm QVARTZ—already seem to be follow-
ing a similar approach successfully. Empirical research
is needed on how such innovative forms of temporal
structuring can help organizations to manage their
temporality in more sustainable ways.
Limitations and Future Research
A first limitation of our paper stems from our de-
cision to draw on retrospective data. This choice was
useful for studying the long-term organizational dy-
namics of temporal uncoupling and temporal lock-
in, but future studies could opt for other types of
data—for example, ethnographic, time use, or digital
trace data—to study the micro-dynamics of temporal
uncoupling and lock-in.
Second, to keep the scope of our theorizing man-
ageable, we focused on the dynamics of (de)syn-
chronization relative to clients, on the one hand, and
societal work time rhythms, on the other. In so doing,
we backgrounded broader industry-level dynamics.
However, in organizational environments, many
different types of systems and rhythms abound.
Professional organizations, families, universities,
governmental agencies, and competitors all consti-
tute significant systems with which a focal organi-
zation interacts. Studying the dynamics of (de)
synchronization unfolding at the intersection of the
multiple, potentially divergent, and even conflicting
temporalities of such systems on the industry level is
also a promising avenue for future research.
Finally, our decision to focus on temporality also
offers opportunities for future studies to examine
how factors that were beyond the scope of our study
play into the temporal dynamics of extreme work
hours. For example, scholars could draw on research
on technologically mediated availability (Mazmanian,
2013; Mazmanian et al., 2013) to examine how new
1845
digital technologies shape the dynamics of synchroni-
zation, desynchronization, and temporal uncoupling.
A further opportunity for research pertains to linking
our findings with studies on organizational control and
power (Kärreman & Alvesson, 2009; Michel, 2011),
which so far have paid only limited attention to tem-
porality (for an exception, see Costas & Grey, 2014)
CONCLUSION
Whether we conceptualize temporal structuring as
a process guided by the logic of entrainment or of
temporal uncoupling has important consequences.
The dominant lens of entrainment suggests that
organizations almost automatically end up synchro-
nized with the most important rhythms of their en-
vironments. Our new way of seeing foregrounds
asynchrony as synchrony’s equally important coun-
terpart in processes of temporal structuring. This en-
ables us to see organizations as time makers who
choose between the temporal structures with which
they (de)synchronize. Furthermore, our theorizing
elucidates how organizations can sometimes end up
locked in a state of asynchrony from important
rhythms, and have difficulty unlocking. These in-
sights enable researchers to see issues such as extreme
work hours, busyness, and well-being in new and
more complex ways. This should in turn afford novel
approaches for acting upon and changing counter-
productive temporal patterns. By building on our
novel insights, organizational research can come one
step closer to a comprehensive understanding of the
dynamics through which multiple temporalities
emerge, change, interact, and persist; for if organiza-
tions do not manage temporality continuously, tem-
porality might end up managing them.
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Blagoy Blagoev (blagoy.blagoev@leuphana.de) is lec-
turer in organization studies at Leuphana University of
Lüneburg (Germany). He obtained his doctoral degree from
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His research focuses on
organizational time and temporality, routine dynamics,
and new forms of organizing.
Georg Schreyögg (georg.schreyoegg@fu-berlin.de) is a
professor of management at Freie Universität Berlin (Ger-
many) and University of Graz (Austria). He earned his
doctoral degree at Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. His
current research interests include organizational change,
time, organizational capabilities, and path dependence.
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