Viewed from a practice perspective, the distinction be­tween cyclic and linear time blurs because it depends on the observer's point of view and moment of observation. In particular cases, simply shifting the observer's vantage point (e.g., from the corporate suite to the factory floor) or changing the period of observation (e.g., from a week to a year) may make either the cyclic or the linear aspect of ongoing practices more salient.

An emphasis on the cyclic temporality of organizational life also underpins the work on entrain­ment, developed in the natural sciences and gaining cur­rency in organization studies. Defined as "the adjustment of the pace or cycle of one activity to match or synchro­nize with that of another" (Ancona and Chong 1996, p. 251 ), entrainment has been used to account for a variety of organizational phenomena displaying coordinated or synchronized temporal cycles (Ancona and Chong 1996, Clark 1990, Gersick 1994, McGrath 1990).