Temporal impacts of information technology in organizations: A literature review

Abstract

In the literature about information technology and organizational change, organizational dimensions like distribution of authority and control, standardization, centralization, specialization of labour have received great attention but much less attention has been given to the study of the relationship between information technology and the temporal dimension of the organization of work, in spite of the fact that during the last decades there has been an increasing interest in time in the organizational literature. The research on the temporal implications of information technology in organizations, though still limited, has started to gain a stable attention during the last decade. The aim of the paper is to propose a literature review of this studies, in order to examine what concepts of time and theoretical frameworks have been used to analyze the temporal dimension; what typologies of IT have been taken in consideration as relevant from a temporal point of view, what epistemological, theoretical and methodological perspectives have been adopted in empirical studies on the topic so far. Considerations on the state of the art and future directions for research on this topic conclude the paper. © 2008 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg.