Temporary Organizing – the End of Organizations As We Know Them?

Organizations make ample use not only of temporary employment and contract work but also of projects, perhaps the most popular form of temporary organizing. This trend towards projectification and temporariness will nevertheless not herald the end of organizations as we know them. In order to be effective, most forms of temporary organizing rely on complementary permanent organizational or interorganizational structures. The full paper will discuss this role of context not only for project-based and project-supported organizations but also for interorganizational projects and project networks. The trend towards temporary organizing, that is embedded in - and at the same time contributes - towards projectification of society and radicalized modernity, will make organization theory not redundant but asks for a processual reconceptualization of the temporary and the permament. This reconceptualization also has to reflect developments of the societal scale.