Year
2022
Authors
GOMEZ Marie-Léandre, LORINO Philippe, KERVEILLANT Marie, LANGLOIS Matthieu, MOUREY Damien
Abstract
How do actors collectively experience disruptive situations, make sense, coordinate and act? We suggest that the ongoing production of an integrated and coherent time-space frame is an essential dimension of organizing and sensemaking processes, particularly in disruptive situations. We develop a pragmatist-inspired framework on organizing processes as narrative inquiry with a relational, intertwined and open-ended view on the inseparability of space and time. We draw on Bakhtin’s concept of chronotope. The chronotope of the organizing process is the fused and meaningful time-space frame of the collective action in progress. Based on this frame, we investigate an exemplifying case, the evacuation of wounded during the Bataclan terror attack on November 13th, 2015 in Paris. We show that actors do not think and act about time and space separately and sequentially (time then space or vice versa, and then the time-space relationship) but in a fully integrated and relational way, in a time-space frame. During their interventions, they mobilize and reconstruct coherent chronotopes in situ, to respond effectively to the situation.
GOMEZ, M.L., KERVEILLANT, M., LANGLOIS, M., LORINO, P. et MOUREY, D. (2022). The intertwined dimensions of time and space in crisis situations The case of rapid tactical evacuation during the Bataclan terrorist attack. Dans: EGOS 38th Symposium, sub-theme 22: Depth, Verticality, and Visibility in Organizing: Integrating Space and Time, WU. Vienna.