ABSTRACT
This chapter looks specifically at the temporal resources of work organizations, and assess the difficulties such institutions face in controlling temporal assets. It introduces some of the natural and social imperatives underlying the relationship between time and organization. Time is a basic element of human organization. The chapter argues that although temporality may lack meaning unless we accept it as a stream of motion and action, for much human understanding it also represents structured condition of behaviour a boundary for defining and stabilizing existence. It devotes most of analysis to social times, we must remember that it is in fact nature which first gives humans their sense of time: it is the natural cycles of human development which first signal that there are patterns to life. Indeed, familial functions have been surrendered in line with greater specialization around distinct foreign agencies. Social functions have become the province of organizations such as the state, the factory, the shop, and the school.
