Time Matters. Tempocentrism—Key Impediment for Transcultural Processes

We interpret the core agenda of this volume as the development of theories for governance practice(s) in management and leadership based on (cultural) commonality and diversity. Our contribution will explore a multi-disciplinary approach marrying concepts from relational economics and leadership research with broader analytical perspectives of anthropology. We will discuss how anthropological concepts of transculturality and transculturation transplanted into the field of relational economics could translate into change and transformation by diversity. To have a substantial impact, cultural (and biological) diversity depends on de-essentializing perceptions of rigid identities and fixed identifications, enabling a complementary or truly transcultural comprehension of relational “otherness”. Such an oscillating open-ended procedure resists dominant orderings of “otherness” as pre-conceived labeling and leads to a permanent discursive reflection of diversity and cultural difference/s. It acknowledges that identification of divergences is more often than not stereotypical. Practically, this means for us to draw our main interest to all levels of (power) hierarchies in corporations, organizations, and networks. Leadership strategies cannot prescribe top-down transcultural change, if no more than window dressing is attempted. Therefore, we suggest strengthening bottom-up approaches aimed to promote social and environmental justice through transcultural procedures. We are convinced that the transformative upsurge should not be restricted to the narrow confines of the social sphere of “human resources” but must address the devastating impact of human economic activities on nature in the “Anthropocene”. Relational economics and its underlying concept of relationality will have to extend to all ends of human/social embeddedness in natural processes and ecosystems. Taking relationality seriously means thinking (and acting) in terms of decolonizing nature from centuries of human interventions of progressively suspending ecological self-regulation. The practical aim of this contribution is geared toward substituting the once dominant habitus of tempocentrism with effective and accountable sustainability. The triple ecological crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, species extinction, and climate change needs urgent institutionalization of sustainable transformation or “timefulness”. We thus provide a critique of the long-standing norm of “time (money) matters” and argue for historicization of time (as temporal) matters in research of transculturality.