ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how time and temporality have been portrayed in industrial sociology. It outlines the main theories of time available to sociologists, and suggests that these, when applied in formal research investigations, can yield rich and diverse insights into work behaviour. The chapter discusses below work not only from the linear-quantitative tradition but also from the cyclic-qualitative one. It suggests nevertheless that for industrial sociology this does not provide a sufficient basis for explaining working-time. The chapter argues then, that working time is a much richer phenomenon than is portrayed in mainstream industrial sociology. To conduct research into the working-time, it can be argued that one needs qualitative as well as quantitative approaches; he/she needs methods which access inter-subjective features as well as structural ones methods which describe subjective as well as objective features of time-structuring.
