Special Issue on " Narrative and Time"

Guest Editor: Eric Kramer

Call Close Date: December 2003

We are especially interested in papers that describe conditions within organizations concerning temporal valence, +and how such time structures are normalized and or legitimized

through overt policy statements and modes of mundane comportment and conversation.  We are interested in how vacation and work time are articulated in official published policy, memographic and electronic expression, and daily conversation.  We are interested in cases where official statement and actual behavior vary (such as in Japan) and how such variance is normalized through talk and behavior.  This often takes the form of minor acts of resistance to officially structured work conditions.  We are also interested in comparative analyses of the different temporal valences between written articulation of policy and oral interaction and decision-making.  How, for instance, are textual stories about the economic environment as may appear in say the Wall Street Journal, used to justify slow downs or accelerations in work, hiring, lay-offs, granting over time, granting vacation time, et cetera.  What kinds of authorities dictate the pace of work and the pace of organizational expansion and contraction?  How is time defined as a resource?  What other forms of time and duration exist within organizations and how are they manifested?  How do members of organizations work together to cover shifts and make deadlines?  How do workers manage demands on their time between work and personal desires, ambitions, and obligations?  An example would be the literature that deals with women who discover belatedly that they have postponed having a family for professional goals too long, and men who end up having only a minor influence on the primary socialization of their children because of extra-personal obligations made on their time.  Comparisons between national policies and practices and cultural differences about how time is done, talked about, managed are especially of interest.  Please make submissions according to the guidelines posted on the Tamara website at  http://www.zianet/boje/tamara

Contact for Submissions::

 Eric Kramer,  Department of Communication
The University of Oklahoma
Burt Hall 101, 610 Elm Street
Norman, OK 73019
Phone: 405-325-2349
Fax: 405-325-7516
Email: kramer@ou.edu