The notion of temporal structuring focuses attention on what people actually do temporally in their practices, and how in such ongoing and situated activity they shape and are shaped by particular temporal structures. By exam­ining when people do what they do in their practices, we can identify what temporal structures shape and are shaped (often concurrently) by members of a community; how these interact; whether they are interrelated, over­lapping, and nested, or separate and distinct; and the ex­tent to which they are compatible, complementary, or contradictory.

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.

In spite of the general movement from particular to­wards universal notions of time (Castells 1996, Giddens 1990, Zerubavel 1981 ), we can see that in use, all uni versa! temporal structures must be particularized to local contexts because they are enacted through the situated practices of specific community members in specific locations and time zones.

One such op­position is that between universal (global, standardized, acontextual) and particular (local, situated, context­specific) time.

The haunting question is how do I fit into the story.

Maclean et al. also demonstrate clearly how sensemaking can be defined by its stages. The movement through time of different forms of interpretive work is captured in their phrase ‘language that constructs and gives order to reality, which it (temporarily) sta-bilizes’ (p. 20). They suggest that this movement consists of locating, meaning-making, and becoming.

Later in their article, Cunliffe and Coupland effectively summarize sensemaking as embodied efforts to figure out what to do and who we are. That is a tidy framework for interpreting the life stories of elite bankers since they are essentially figuring out what they did and who they were, with heavy editing, to point up the legitimacy of the what and who that are retrieved.

Gephart et al. define sensemaking as ‘an ongoing process that creates an intersubjective sense of shared meanings through conversation and non-verbal behavior in face to face settings where people seek to/produce, negotiate, and maintain a shared sense of meaning’ (2010: 284–285).

Cunliffe and Coupland treat sensemaking as ‘collaborative activity used to create, legitimate and sustain organiza-tional practices or leadership roles’ (p. 65). If we add the phrase ‘and individual’ to the word ‘collaborative’ in that definition then we have a rendition of sensemaking that works for the Maclean et al. article, right down to the focus on legitimacy and leadership.

Whittle and Mueller also anticipate and inform the nature of reconstructing a life story when they depict sensemaking as ‘a broader term [than stories] that refers to the process through which people interpret themselves and the world around them through the pro-duction of meaning’ (p. 114). It is their focus on ‘meaning’ and their inclusion of both the person and ‘the world around them’ that fits Maclean

As Bojeet al. (2016a, p. 395)indicate, through situating antenarratives in subjec-tive time, they are able to show ‘how diverse voicesinterconnect, embed and entangle in organizationalstrategies’.

Theway organizational membersinterpret or situate themselves in time and embrace time-related concepts such as of time scarcity, urgency, orientation. ‘temporal construals inform and are informed by intersubjective, subjective and objective times.’ (R. A. Roe et al., 2009

Social identities have increasing difficulty in being construed in terms of stable social attributes in a highly mobile -both socially and geographically - society. They will have to rely on other, temporal dimensions, in what are becoming increasingly precari-ous, if not completely contingent, identities in constant need of redefi-nition. One's 'own', proper time situated in a momentous present which is extended on the societal level in order to accommodate the pressing overload of problems, choices and strategies, becomes a central value for the individual as well as a characteristic of the societal system (Nowotny, 1989a)

Personal and organizational histories occupy prominent figure positions in the figure-ground dichotomy, and that such histories are used to cope with the future is indicated by several pieces of evidence.

The amount of time we are willing to devote to the various relations in which we are involved and organizations to which we belong clearly reflects the level of our commit- ment to each of them

While the Printer Clock focused on emphasising the embodied and situated nature of time, pointing to the mesh of activities and characters that come together to create time, the TimeBots drew attention to personal rhythms and how they played out within the context of the classroom