Abstract
Abstract
Purpose:
This research aims to examine the practice of leadership in organizational settings marked by the persistent feature of temporal fragmentation, where common work cadences are disrupted by hybrid forms of work, asynchronous collaboration, and geographically dispersed work groups. This research proposes the concept of Temporal Fragmentation Leadership (TFL) to shed light on how leadership can maintain coordination, cohesion, and direction in settings where temporal coordination cannot be assumed.
Design/methodology/approach:
Through the adoption of a qualitative approach, the research takes an interpretivist approach, using semi-structured interviews with 22 participants who are active in the digitally mediated and temporally fragmented organizational context. The research takes an inductive-abductive approach to analyse the development of leadership practices in the context of asynchronous work patterns, competing temporal demands, and distributed coordination.
Findings:
The results show that leadership in fragmented temporal contexts is achieved through a particular repertoire of practices, which include temporal sensemaking, rhythm bridging, and temporal buffering. These practices enable leaders' guidance of joint work without requiring synchronized interaction, effectively moving leadership influence from direct supervision towards anticipatory coordination and interpretive framing. Temporal fragmentation was also seen to create relational strain and temporal inequity, requiring leaders' active mediation of availability and tempo-related expectations.
Originality/value:
This research contributes to the development of leadership theory by conceptualizing time not as a variable to be managed, but as a structural condition in its own right, and the proposed time-focused leadership (TFL) framework extends existing theories of temporal leadership by considering contexts in which synchrony is partial or unattainable, offering a new way of thinking about leadership in hybrid and digitally mediated work environments.