Accounting for time: managing time in project-based teamworking

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate time management in project based teamworking, a form of work that is seen as becoming a significant feature in many organisations, and consider its implications for accounting control. The analysis is based on a perspective on time in organisations which, drawing on time-geography, considers the management of time in project-based teamworking organisations as part of the organisational actors' ongoing active production and reproduction of their social context. We grounded this perspective in a longitudinal ethnographic study of project-based teamworking, which examined the development process of computer-based management information systems for top executives in a large multinational company. The extended time-geography perspective presented in this paper offers a theoretical framework within which various organisational practices may be explained and provides a better understanding of the social dynamics of time management than is provided by traditional accounting approaches. The implications of this perspective for the use of accounting practices in the management of time in project-based teamworking are discussed.