Project management essentially involves temporal work, in other words, the purposive effort to orient the temporal structures that guide action around given tasks. Yet, projects often involve participants or stakeholders holding different temporal orientations that may be more or less compatible with proposed temporal structures. In this paper we consider how different forms of temporal structuring influence project behavior (i.e., how participants engage with projects, and how projects play out to produce outcomes). Specifically, building on a review of the literature on projects and temporality, we explore how and why the socially constructed nature of project tasks (open-ended vs. closed-ended) interacts with efforts at temporal structuring (open vs. closed) to orient participants’ actions, with varying consequences for behaviors and outcomes. We conclude by proposing a series of future research directions aimed at better understanding the relations between temporal structuring and project behavior.

In this chapter we explore the multi-temporalities and organisational challenges that emerge in telework adopted by public sector organizations, looking at how temporal structures from office and home eventually collide. We interviewed 32 civil servants from six different Brazilian public sector organizations that freely opted to work at home in a pre-pandemic period. Our findings reveal contradictions related to how teleworkers perceive temporal structures shaping their daily activities in home office. Such contradictions emerge as temporal structures from office and home may not allow accommodation, mainly for synchronous tasks.