The Role of Socially Constructed Temporal Perspectives in the Emergence of Rapid-Growth Firms
研究快速成长企业的老板和高管如何通过社会建构时间（同时关注当下和未来、选择性匹配客户员工的时间节奏、塑造组织内的时间观念）来促进企业高速增长。
This study examined how owners and top management team members in firms that are growing very rapidly socially construct time so as to facilitate rapid growth. A blend of interview and text-based qualitative methods was used to study some firms that have achieved rapid growth and some that have yet to do so. Analysis led to the identification of several thematic patterns regarding the enactment of time. The first was simultaneity: informants appeared to sustain a simultaneous focus on the events actually occurring in the present and the outcomes desired in the future, so that strategies to deal with the present are emergent but the goals and time-frames for obtaining them remain relatively fixed. The second was selectivity: rather than passively accepting the time-frames of key customers or employees, these firms sought out customers and staff who shared a pace and movability of enacted time in congruence with the firms’ goals. The third theme was shaping: top managers in rapid-growth firms adopted or developed systems and procedures that allow them to shape the enactment of time throughout their organizations. The paper concludes with some propositions about the nature of enacted time in firms that are more versus less successful in growing rapidly.