ABSTRACT
Temporal rules govern varieties of human activities, and these seem to grow in number, importance, and the need for temporal precision. The order of temporal uses is, however, of considerable importance. Thus timing is a sequential allocation of time, where the sequence is itself a critical component of the actions and their analysis. Activities are subject to both temporal concentration and temporal segregation. The "static" temporal dimensions of organizations, then, are set by the inventory of person-time units. Undoubtedly the decisional power of housewives is enhanced by their temporal primacy in the family, but the rather unequal actual power of women in the families of industrial societies warns against so mechanical an interpretation. The substantially alters the long-term temporal structure of the family. Long-term allocations are complicated by organizational immortality, so that the future terminus of planning and temporal ordering is itself a matter of judgment.
