Business network becoming: Figurations of time, change and process

Abstract

Concepts such as ‘time’ and ‘change’ are always presaged by metaphor, narratives and other ‘tropes’ and are therefore, representations invented by association, analogy, indirect inferences and figuration. If these representations change, then their meaning also changes. In this paper, we argue that dominant figurations of time have been predominantly mechanistic and a consequence of ‘substance’ metaphysics. The mechanistic metaphor of time constructs comprehensions of time that are linear, homogenous and clock-like. As with any analogical representations, this type of figuration favors some aspects of time and diminishes others. Our proposition is that if we apply an alternative ‘process metaphysics’ to time, then this is associated with different figurative representations. In this paper, we make specific reference to the IMP research tradition where we explore ‘holographic or rhizomic time’ as a different temporal metaphor. We illustrate what linear clock time reveals and hides in a ‘centered’ epistemology and explore what an adoption of ‘holographic’ time would allow us to see, and discuss some of the benefits and limitations of this different figuration of time, which promotes a ‘de-centered’ epistemology.