Research Seminar – Professor Shaz Ansari

Nova School of Business and Economics, room B005 (floor 0)​

Nova SBE Research Unit invited professor Shaz Ansari from University of Cambridge for a Research Seminar.

This Research Seminar was organized by Management & Organizations with ERA Chair in Social Innovation​.

Prof. Shaz Ansari  presented “Experiencing time like groundhog day? Uncovering the morality of time and temporarily in end-of-life care”.

Abstract​

Conflicting perceptions of time – quantitative versus qualitative – are an important source of organizational conflict. Drawing on a longitudinal study of palliative care in Germany, we observed that such temporal conflict arises not just from a clash in interpretations or social norms about time but from a clash in moral values that individuals attached to time. Staff faced moral pressure to accommodate patients’ subjective experiences of time when confronting death but also needed to “ration” time through productivity-driven clock-based timelines to efficiently serve a large number of patients. First, our findings suggest that conflicts that arise from a clash in moral values underlying temporalities can be resolved by aligning these conflicting moral values. Second, while most studies on time in organizations take a binary view – portraying clock time as hegemonic and immoral and qualitative time as humane and moral – we develop a differentiated view whereby both temporalities can be moral and immoral. Third, we show how moral entrepreneurs can leverage differences in the moral values individuals attach to time within a group and engage in “moral work” to persuade dissenters in that group into embracing an alternative temporality.