How Actors Effect Shifts in Strategic Trajectories: The Role of Temporal Nexus Events

Abstract

We apply a temporal view to an event at the intersection of two activity streams in a naval design and construction company. This view shows how, at this event, actors revived a solution that had been proposed several years before within one stream by using it to address an imminent problem in a second stream, which eventually produced a shift in the company’s strategic trajectory. The temporal orientation of the event’s activity contrasted with the temporal orientations of the two intersecting activity streams. The temporal orientations of the two intersecting streams proved nevertheless vital for the event’s generation of the strategy shift. We suggest the label “temporal nexus events” for these intersectional events. We propose a process model for how actors reach back in time along activity streams while drawing upon those streams to implement novel solutions that harbor the potential for a strategic shift.