The business is all about busyness: hybrid workers’ temporal autonomy and the temporal structure of acceleration Open Access

Acceleration, defined as the shortening of the spatiotemporal distances of tasks and interactions (Rosa, 2003; Skade et al., 2020), has become a universal pattern in contemporary organizations. This is pronounced in hybrid work organizations, where communication technologies are used not only to speed up operations and decision-making but also to enable work to be performed nearly anytime and anywhere (Griva et al., 2024; Halford, 2005; Petani and Mengis, 2023). While hybrid work arrangements may provide employees with greater freedom in managing their time, as illustrated in the opening quote from a hybrid worker’s diary, the acceleration of work tasks can also create new expectations that employees must navigate. In hybrid work settings, employees may experience pressure to be “always on,” a blurring of work and family time and increasingly tight deadlines (Kotýnková Krotká, 2025; Vostal, 2019). Under such intensifying work conditions, employee autonomy is easily compromised, leading to diminished well-being (Simpson et al., 2020; Wajcman, 2008), digital fatigue (e.g. Marsh et al., 2024) and even burnout (Fleming, 2014) – topical phenomena that have also received extensive attention in public discourse (e.g. Forbes Coaches Council, 2024; Robinson, 2025). How employees experience acceleration in the context of hybrid work, therefore, warrants critical investigation.

The relationship between temporality and hybrid work has attracted nascent attention in organization and management research. Existing studies have examined temporality primarily in terms of the duration, timing and frequency of hybridity (Vartiainen and Vanharanta, 2024). For example, research highlights how technology-mediated collaboration increases the temporal flexibility and efficiency of hybrid work (Griva et al., 2024; Santillan et al., 2023). More critical studies show that hybrid arrangements can also create temporal challenges, such as difficulties disconnecting from work (Dale et al., 2024; Vesala, 2024) and the pressure to deliver results more quickly (Zamani and Spanaki, 2023). However, much of the existing literature assumes that hybrid workers face similar temporal opportunities and challenges. Yet the different ways in which hybrid workers experience the temporality of work deserve closer attention. As hybrid work arrangements become increasingly characterized by acceleration, examining workers’ temporal experiences can shed light on how they relate to the faster pace of work and negotiate, or even seek to reclaim, their autonomy with regard to time.

In this paper, we examine the relationship between temporality and hybrid work by theorizing acceleration as a temporal structure (Orlikowski and Yates, 2002) through which hybrid workers negotiate their temporal autonomy (Geiger et al., 2021; Kunzl and Messner, 2023; Schriber and Gutek, 1987). By temporal structure, we refer to the patterned organization of time that shapes how employees engage with work and the world in their day-to-day lives (Granqvist and Gustafsson, 2016). For example, temporal structures such as deadlines and unspoken social expectations around time can encourage employees to embody energetic work rhythm (Katila et al., 2020; Stephenson et al., 2024). Employees, however, are not powerless in relation to temporal structures. Instead, they may exercise temporal autonomy; an agentic capacity to actively adapt, maintain and alter temporal expectations (Kunzl and Messner, 2023). Building on this perspective, our research question is: How do hybrid workers a) experience the acceleration of their work and b) perceive their temporal autonomy under these conditions?

Empirically, we report on a qualitative study of hybrid workers’ experiences in the context of a Nordic research organization (NRC). We make use of an interview–diary–interview method, i.e. IDIM, which is a temporally embedded, repetitive data generation method that emphasizes participants’ repeated reflection and generates narratively rich data (Pagh, 2020). We conduct an iterative analysis and report the findings through composite narratives (e.g. Johnston et al., 2023; Wertz et al., 2011) illustrating the experiential nature of acceleration and its various consequences for hybrid workers’ temporal autonomy.

We make three contributions to existing literature. First, by studying hybrid workers’ experiences of acceleration we take a novel approach that shifts attention from temporality as a feature of work to temporality as an experienced quality that shapes and is shaped by hybrid workers’ temporal autonomy. Second, we further the discussion of acceleration in organizational temporality research by uncovering the various meanings of acceleration and the ways its sources are reconstituted in organizational processes. Third, we advance the methodology of organization and management studies by showing the rich and illustrative potential of combining IDIM with composite narrative writing.

Hybrid work refers to flexible arrangements in which employees divide their time between an organization-provided location, such as an office, and remote location(s), such as home and public spaces (Halford, 2005; Petani and Mengis, 2023; Wu et al., 2023). As an inherently dynamic arrangement, hybrid work differs from telework (e.g. Sewell and Taskin, 2015) and remote work (e.g. Suortti and Sivunen, 2024) in that it involves constant shifts between traditional and non-traditional modes of work in terms of modality, location and temporality (Lauring and Jonasson, 2025).

Lauring and Jonasson (2025) define modality as how work and collaboration occur, whether through face-to-face interactions or digital platforms. While location refers to where work takes place – within an office, in a shared workspace or in a distributed, non-office setting, temporality refers to when work is done, either synchronously or asynchronously, with varying degrees of flexibility in scheduling. Organizational research on hybrid work has largely focused on location-based work modes (Lauring and Jonasson, 2025), with researchers examining hybrid places (Petani and Mengis, 2023) or spaces (Halford, 2005) and reflecting on how modern communication technologies enable such hybrid work arrangements (e.g. Wu et al., 2023). Some studies have focused on the temporality of hybrid work, highlighting how hybrid work can offer employees greater autonomy with regard to the use of working hours (Höcker et al., 2024) – but also generate heightened temporal pressures, including work extensification and challenges of “switching off” (Dale et al., 2024) as well as the need to speed up tasks, deliver results more quickly and continuously adapt to new technological tools (Zamani and Spanaki, 2023). However, only few studies have focused on how hybrid arrangements influence the experienced intensity, pace and rhythm of work – factors that significantly shape employees’ possibilities to plan and conduct their work (Griva et al., 2024; Vesala, 2024).

While existing studies have highlighted the temporal demands of hybrid work, they often portray hybrid workers as experiencing uniform pressures in a similar manner, such as the need to speed up work (Zamani and Spanaki, 2023). This tendency is problematic because it overlooks the different ways in which workers may experience these temporal demands (Shipp and Jansen, 2021). The consequences of organizational policies such as flexible hybrid work norms can be diverse and thus create distinctions and inequalities in hybrid work. Arguably, not all hybrid workers relate to the temporality of their work in the same way – or have the same opportunities to modify expectations and pressures lined to it. To better understand the different ways in which the temporal demands of hybrid work are experienced and how they are shaped by the workers themselves, we now turn to our theoretical framework, which integrates the concepts of acceleration, temporal structures and temporal autonomy.

According to Rosa (2013), acceleration is a defining feature of modernity, driven by technological advancements, economic pressures and social change. Rosa (2003) identifies three forms of acceleration: technological acceleration, the acceleration of social change and the acceleration of the overall pace of life. Technological acceleration refers to the rapid development of new technologies that enhance communication and production speed. The acceleration of social change highlights the increasing turnover of social structures, norms and institutions. Meanwhile, the acceleration of the pace of life captures the subjective experience of needing to accomplish more in less time, often leading to stress and pressure.

While the three forms of acceleration are inherently related, acceleration in organizational contexts is often discussed in terms of technological acceleration. This also forms the focus of our work, as in hybrid work – we propose – the experience of acceleration is intimately linked to the adoption of modern communication technologies. Previous organizational studies on contemporary work arrangements have, for instance, emphasized how connectivity-related norms and expectations contribute to “time poverty” (Kotýnková Krotká, 2025). Rapid advancements in technology-mediated communication – particularly digital tools that enable instant, constant and pervasive connectivity (e.g. email, instant messaging and video conferencing) and digital calendars that maximize humans’ mastery over efficient time use – are driving acceleration in organizational contexts (e.g. Wajcman, 2008, 2019). In examining these temporal complexities, scholars have identified a paradox: while digital technologies are designed to streamline communication and free up time for other tasks, they often lead to continuous acceleration, ultimately fostering a sense of time scarcity (Entschew, 2021; Wajcman, 2008). As a result, constant time pressure and busyness have become increasingly prevalent in modern organizational environments (e.g. Bellezza et al., 2017; Lupu and Rokka, 2022). It could be argued that due to acceleration, the sense of time, i.e. temporality, has changed.

Within existing research, a key distinction is often made between time and temporality, as these terms reflect different ontological perspectives (Blagoev et al., 2023; Orlikowski and Yates, 2002). Time is typically understood in a linear, objective sense – measured as clock time – where events occur in an irreversible sequence from past to present to future (Ancona et al., 2001). In contrast, temporality refers to the subjective and socially constructed experience of time (Ballard, 2017). Temporality encompasses the simultaneous experience of past, present and future, and it entails individuals’ and collectives’ interpretations of time, the sensemaking processes they engage in and the meanings they attach to temporal experiences (Shipp and Jansen, 2021).

In our study, we make use of the notion of temporality and conceptualize acceleration as a temporal structure in the context of hybrid work. Temporal structures refer to the socially constructed patterns that influence how people engage with work and the world in their daily lives (Granqvist and Gustafsson, 2016; Holt and Johnsen, 2019). These structures are shared understandings of time that “guide, orient and coordinate” individuals’ perceptions (Orlikowski and Yates, 2002, p. 684), providing rhythm, pace and structure to everyday work. For example, a project schedule can function as a temporal structure by pacing work activities, just as the changing seasons influence how workers plan their vacations. In organizations, temporal structures serve various functions, such as shaping workers’ sense of urgency (Katila et al., 2020) and influencing how they allocate attention between the past, present and future (Kaplan and Orlikowski, 2013).

Analytically, the concept of temporal structure shifts focus away from clock time as an objective measure, but also challenges the idea that time exists solely as a subjective experience within individual cognition (Reinecke and Ansari, 2017). Instead, it highlights how the experiences of temporal phenomena (like acceleration) are shaped by complex, socially constructed norms and demands that individuals, in turn, create, sustain and transform through their experiences. In so doing, this approach differs from how previous theorizations of hybrid work see time mainly as duration, timing and frequency of hybridity (Vartiainen and Vanharanta, 2024). Thus, theorizing acceleration as a temporal structure directs attention to how acceleration works as a patterned organization of time that both shapes and is shaped by hybrid workers’ socially constituted experiences.

The notion of temporal structure is closely related to temporal autonomy that generally refers to the autonomy and adaptability of one’s time use (Geiger et al., 2021; Schriber and Gutek, 1987). It has been suggested that “people are purposive, knowledgeable, adaptive and inventive actors […] who can also choose […] to (re)shape” the temporal structures based on their goals and needs (Orlikowski and Yates, 2002, p. 688). Temporal autonomy (also referred to as temporal self-discipline), thus, refers to employees’ agentic capacity to control work through temporal structuring (Kunzl and Messner, 2023). Arguably, contemporary work is filled with demands that challenge employees’ temporal autonomy. For instance, constant connectivity expectations (e.g. Büchler et al., 2020; Mazmanian, 2013) demand employees’ attention while interruptions and multitasking (e.g. Mark et al., 2015) challenge their focus. The affecto-rhythmic order of organizational practices, in turn, regulates the appropriate intensity and mood in which employees are expected to perform their work (Katila et al., 2020). Such routinized communication patterns can turn into organizationally enacted norms and perceived time demands (Ballard and Seibold, 2003).

Overall, we argue that theorizing acceleration as a temporal structure, both shaped by and shaping hybrid workers’ temporal autonomy, offers a nuanced understanding of how these workers experience the temporality of their work. This perspective provides conceptual tools to uncover and theorize the different ways in which hybrid workers may engage with the temporality of hybrid work, as well as how they negotiate, or even seek to reclaim, their ability to make choices about the pace, timing and duration of their work activities.

We conducted an empirical study of hybrid workers’ acceleration experiences in Nordic Research Collaborative (NRC, a pseudonym). NRC is a state research institute that employs over a thousand people who are located across several regions and organizational sites. NRC is best described as a matrix organization as it consists of several units while the work itself is often project-based, entailing collaboration and reporting within and across units. Due to the distributed nature of NRC, the employees often collaborate digitally across geographical distances. Moreover, driven by the Covid pandemic, a few years prior to the study NRC had implemented flexible hybrid work practices, allowing employees to work from any of the NRC offices, from home or from other location of their choosing if appropriate for the tasks at hand.

Altogether, 20 NRC employees participated in the study between May and November 2022. Participant demographics are compiled on Table 1. All participants worked in roles serving NRC’s basic function, i.e. conducting research and serving as a science-based authority within its field. Some (n = 7) of the participants worked as researchers, experts or in managerial positions. These employees worked on knowledge-intensive tasks (e.g. writing research proposals and articles, coordinating research projects). The rest (n = 13) of the participants belonged to roles we refer to as support functions. Support function employees’ tasks entailed, e.g. collecting and processing data for research projects, and practical tasks around offices. The support function employees often characterized their work as versatile, specifying that their roles were a combination of office work (i.e. at NRC or home office), meetings and collaboration via digital tools (e.g. email, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp), traveling for work assignments and practical work alone or in collaboration with others (e.g. data collection). Thus, the participating NRC employees can best be defined as hybrid workers. The participants’ official working hours varied depending on their roles, but they generally characterized their actual working times as flexible and dynamic.

To incorporate temporality to the research process, the first author engaged with the participants in generating a qualitative dataset applying a repetitive IDIM (for a similar method see Pagh, 2020). Each of the 20 employees participated in all the phases, i.e. a brief introductory interview followed within a few weeks by a diary study and an in-depth interview. The data were generated repetitively to acquire temporal depth to the dataset, to co-construct and understand implicit temporal experiences through layered participant self-reflections.

The introductory interview was conducted to acquire background information (e.g. participants’ job descriptions and typical collaboration practices) and provide instructions for the following phases. The diary study was text-based and conducted on Webropol survey platform with open-ended questions (Berg and Düvel, 2012; Markham and Couldry, 2007). The participants kept the diary once a day for seven consecutive workdays (excluding weekend). The diary questions focused on employees’ daily technology-mediated communication routines including also summarizing questions to encourage self-reflection (e.g. what has been especially noteworthy to you during this diary-keeping?). Finally, the in-depth interview was based on detailed questions on hybrid workers’ collaboration practices at NRC, but along these predefined questions the in-depth interview was anchored to the diary (Pagh, 2020) to discuss the diary entries in more detail (including follow-up questions if diary entries were ambiguous). Apart from one face-to-face interview, the data were generated remotely via video conferencing or phone calls. All interviews were transcribed verbatim.

To answer our RQ on employees’ experiences of acceleration and temporal autonomy through their everyday hybrid work experiences reflected in the diary and in-depth interview discussions, we applied iterative analysis. Iterative analysis entails an abductive process that draws alternately on inductive, data-driven interpretations and established theorizations from literature (e.g. Tracy et al., 2024). The iterative analysis process (after data generation) typically entails phases of organizing the data, primary-cycle coding, theoretical iteration and secondary-cycle coding (see Tracy et al., 2024).

In practice, our analysis evolved through four steps. First, the data from different phases of data generation were combined so that each participant’s dataset formed a chronologically organized entity. The first author then initially coded the data on ATLAS.ti (qualitative analysis software) identifying aspects that were prominent, patterned or unexpected. During this early stage of analysis, temporality surfaced as a central topic, which guided the analysis further. Temporality was recognized from expressions characterizing time and pace of hybrid work (e.g. busyness, spontaneity, rhythm, delay, season, change, past and future). The primary-cycle coding was inspired by the temporality literature but mainly entailed inductive and open coding.

Second, and following the iterative process, we discussed the codes together, revisited literature and accordingly refined the coding framework, continuing the analysis towards more synthesized themes as a team of three authors. Some of the codes (e.g. related to worktime per se) were dropped while others were merged and refined to compose a more coherent and systematic thematic structure. For instance, codes such as “simultaneity”, “interruptions”, “urgency” and “scarcity” were grouped into a theme “technology-induced temporal phenomena in hybrid work”. Rest of the themes represented employees’ positive and negative temporal experiences (e.g. “temporal benefits/challenges of hybrid work”) as well as experiences that represented the perceived “temporal expectations” and “communicative practices” of the hybrid work community. A theme of ongoing “temporal change”, although vague at this point, was also recognized as central. As these initial findings suggested that the pace of work was perceived not only changing but increasing, we familiarized ourselves with literature on acceleration and decided to focus the analysis accordingly. We started re-reading the emerging themes with a focus on acceleration, specifically on how hybrid workers’ experiences and their descriptions of collective practices produce a structure of acceleration of hybrid work and how hybrid workers’ temporal autonomy is portrayed in these experiences.

Third, as the result of (re)focusing the analysis, three final themes emerged in secondary-cycle coding. The first theme illustrates acceleration as a structure that is “out there” and represents hybrid workers’ temporal autonomy as something rather passive – workers are observers who are not particularly active or critical in reproducing the structure. The second theme portrays acceleration as a positive development that increases hybrid workers’ sense of temporal autonomy through its ambitious utilization. Lastly, the third theme represents acceleration as a threat that challenges hybrid workers’ sense of temporal autonomy and hampers hybrid workers’ ability to manage their time use.

As the fourth step of our analysis, we used composite narrative writing (Johnston et al., 2023). We wanted to preserve the richness of experiences reported in employees’ diaries and vivid reflections shared in the interviews, while supporting ethical principles of confidentiality and anonymity (Willis, 2019). Moreover, as our initial findings represented a temporal phenomenon that was simultaneously embedded in the past, present and future (Shipp and Jansen, 2021), we saw it useful to transform our interpretations into a narrative structure that unfolds through a story-like arc (start, middle and end), describing how acceleration has been or is, how it currently expresses itself and how it will likely be in the future (of narrative arc see, e.g. Boyd et al., 2020).

We will report the themes established during the analysis through composite narratives (Johnston et al., 2023). These narratives integrate several participant voices while giving room to us as researchers as we bring our own subjective yet reflexive temporal interpretations to the study (Feuls et al., 2023) while actively making sense of (Wertz et al., 2011) temporal experiences “together” with our participants. Composite narrative writing enabled us to give voice to the participants while seamlessly integrating multiple and layered employee experiences generated through the IDIM. Compared to writing up qualitative analysis through thematized categories, composite narratives offer a form of reflective storytelling that conveys both a “felt sense” of the phenomenon under study and theoretical insights (Wertz et al., 2011). Thus, during this final step of the analysis we composed our interpretations of each theme into narrative threads (see Johnston et al., 2023).

Data excerpts representing pieces of a common thread (i.e. a theme) were first put together, and then by rewriting from first-person perspective they were harmonized to co-construct an initial narrative structure. For instance, the following data excerpts were put together: “It’s quick and efficient use of time to be able to connect with multiple people simultaneously (Tuula, diary)”; “Communicating [with the field workers] has become so much easier and quicker with email and mobile phone” (Tuula, in-depth interview); “It’s a good thing that communication is no more tied to time and place … With, e.g. text messages, emails, and Teams a broad group of colleagues and stakeholders can be reached simultaneously” (Seija, diary). These excerpts were harmonized and rewritten into a following piece of a narrative thread: The simultaneity and mobility enabled by the technologies help me in so many ways.

Pieces of narrative threads were combined and complemented with rich and nuanced data excerpts while utilizing theory-informed interpretation in weaving them into a coherent story. In synthesizing and condensing similar experiences shared by several participants, we seek to offer vivid presentation of themes (for a similar approach see Manca et al., 2025) which illustrates both commonalities between participants (within a narrative) and differences between the themes (across narratives). Thus, to tease out differences between or within employee experiences, individual hybrid workers were sometimes represented in multiple themes. Three composite narratives, representing each main theme, will next be reported as our findings.

The narratives of Paige, Finn and Casey (pseudonyms) each present a different viewpoint to ways in which hybrid workers experience acceleration and how they experience their temporal autonomy. First, Paige is best described as a bystander who is undecided in terms of their attitude toward accelerating hybrid work. Paige’s observations produce the structure of acceleration without feeling particularly strongly about it. Second, Finn is more active in producing, transforming and – most importantly – utilizing the acceleration. Finn is enthusiastic about the new opportunities and eagerly waits for those to develop even further. Finally, Casey’s stance is notably critical, perceiving acceleration negatively and, in fact, resisting it while wishing for deceleration. Casey finds it hard to keep up with the acceleration and experiences it as hampering many aspects of working. A summary of each character’s stance towards different aspects of acceleration is compiled on Table 2. In each of the following subsections, after briefly describing the character, the narrative is presented through two columns (see Tables 3 to 5) where narrative character’s voice (in the left column) is accompanied by our researcher voice and analytical interpretation in the right column (for a similar writing strategy utilizing alternating voices, see Katila et al., 2020).

First, the narrative of Paige (see Table 3) illustrates the perspective of a passive bystander who lives and works within the accelerating hybrid work. Paige echoes a narrative of change which is constituted in the stories of the employees who reminisce older times. Paige also has firsthand experience of the changed working pace, yet they are not bothered by it, nor do they perceive actively contributing to it – they are just going with the flow. Paige’s temporal autonomy, therefore, appears as one of an observer although they, perhaps unknowingly, reinforce the structure of acceleration by repeating the discourse of temporal change.

The narrative of Finn (see Table 4) represents a perspective of an active utilizer who makes the most of acceleration, also curiously contributing to it with their own actions. Finn perceives acceleration positively and is enthusiastic about the new opportunities it brings about for hybrid work. Finn’s narrative illustrates how the temporal structure of acceleration emerges in employees’ experiences of enhanced sense of temporal autonomy. Hybrid work enables new ways of performing and planning tasks in a fast, agile and flexible manner; qualities that are viewed positively. Again, these opportunities are often intertwined with technological tools that enable working anywhere and anytime as well as faster pace and the simultaneity of various tasks.

Finally, the narrative of Casey (see Table 5) reveals a very critical perspective to how the structure of acceleration in hybrid work is perceived. Casey represents a hesitator who wishes to decelerate and hence resists acceleration, is worried about its consequences and almost fearful towards the future. These experiences produce a temporal structure that is characterized by conflict between acceleration and hybrid workers’ temporal autonomy as Casey experiences loss of control over time use. From Casey’s perspective, acceleration appears as a threat to employees’ ability to choose when to work and when not to work – and at what intensity. Therefore, acceleration should be reversed, or at least carefully re-evaluated.

In this paper, we examined how hybrid workers experience the acceleration of their work and how they perceive their temporal autonomy under these conditions. Drawing upon an IDIM and a composite narrative approach, we analyzed the experiences of employees of an organization (“NRC”) operating within a hybrid arrangement. The narratives of Paige, Finn and Casey illustrate that business at NRC is, indeed, all about busyness. That is, hybrid workers’ experiences – facilitated by organizational hybrid work practices – produce a temporal structure of acceleration characterized by the increasing pace of work and communication, as well as the simultaneity of various tasks and interactions (e.g. multicommunication; see Reinsch et al., 2008), enabled by contemporary technologies (see Wajcman, 2008). However, hybrid workers’ experiences of temporal autonomy within acceleration are far from uniform. While the “busyness” characterizing hybrid work at NRC can restrict hybrid workers’ autonomy, it can also be energizing, useful and autonomously leveraged (see also Lupu and Rokka, 2022). Through our study, we make three main contributions to organization and management research.

First, we join the discussion on the temporality of hybrid work (Vartiainen and Vanharanta, 2024; Griva et al., 2024; Santillan et al., 2023) with a critical focus on the ways in which hybrid workers experience the temporality of their work. This is a pressing issue, as hybrid work arrangements are increasingly adopted not only as means to accelerate operations and decision-making but also to optimize time use and organization’s performance without compromising employee well-being (e.g. Loncar et al., 2025). Our study advances this discussion by theorizing and empirically exploring acceleration as a temporal structure in hybrid work, through which employees negotiate their temporal autonomy. Previous studies have primarily examined temporality as a feature of hybrid work, emphasizing increased flexibility (Vartiainen and Vanharanta, 2024) and shifts in the timing and duration of different work modes (e.g. remote vs on-site work) (Lauring and Jonasson, 2025). Our theorization, in turn, directs attention to how the experience of these features both shapes and is shaped by temporal structures that hybrid workers must navigate as part of their work – structures that also influence their perceived ability to manage their own time. This perspective resonates with critical analyses of hybrid work by detailing how challenges such as difficulties disconnecting from work (Dale et al., 2024) and pressure to deliver results more quickly (Zamani and Spanaki, 2023) derive from, and reproduce, social expectations and norms characteristic of acceleration as a temporal structure.

Rather than treating acceleration deterministically, we show how NRC employees relate to it differently, negotiating their temporal autonomy in varied ways. In Paige’s narrative, temporal autonomy is circumscribed by the inevitable acceleration of work tasks, positioning hybrid workers as objective observers who distance themselves from the seemingly law-like pace of acceleration. In Finn’s narrative, by contrast, temporal autonomy is heightened by the new opportunities that technologically induced acceleration unlocks at work. Here, hybrid workers are characterized as accelerators who actively “speed up”. Casey’s narrative, in contrast again, depicts acceleration as a force that diminishes workers’ temporal autonomy and hampers their well-being and collaboration practices – one that calls for organizational interventions and strategies of resistance to reclaim temporal autonomy. Although lacking the autonomy to fully counteract it, the workers’ voices forming Casey’s composite narrative can be characterized as those of decelerators, with their foot on the brake, so to speak. Overall, by revealing the multiplicity of temporal experiences in hybrid work, our analysis enriches prior research on hybrid work, which has tended to assume that hybrid workers face similar temporal opportunities and challenges (Ballard and Seibold, 2003; Feldman et al., 2020; Shipp and Jansen, 2021).

This multiplicity also means that hybrid workers’ experiences in reconstituting the structure of acceleration can sometimes collide. For instance, the objective observers’ (Paige) practices sustain the status quo, while active utilizers’ (Finn) approaches purposefully drive and transform the speed of work. Meanwhile, hesitators (Casey) attempt to decelerate and reclaim their temporal autonomy by actively opposing acceleration. For the development of alternative, perhaps more equitable practices and policies of hybrid work, recognizing this temporal multiplicity is crucial. While the pervasiveness of technology-driven acceleration (see Bansal et al., 2022) can have an overpowering influence on some hybrid workers’ sense of autonomy, organizational actors are not powerless. Although the consequences of accelerating hybrid practices can be unequal for employees, the tendency to speed up is not fixed. As a temporal structure, acceleration is a social construction that can be challenged, reimagined and enacted differently.

Second, we contribute to the emerging interest in acceleration within organizational temporality research. While this research has focused on acceleration as the process of speeding up through the performance of activities in ever-shorter periods of time (e.g. Katila et al., 2020; Skade et al., 2020), relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which the underpinnings of this process are being negotiated in organizations. We respond to this gap by unpacking how organizational members give meaning to the sources of technologically infused acceleration in hybrid work organizations. As our findings illustrate, hybrid workers attribute acceleration mainly to communication technologies (e.g. the efficiency of instant and simultaneous communication channels) and to organizational norms and practices (e.g. task-focused remote meetings and flexible hybrid work policies introduced since the COVID-19 pandemic). Interestingly, employees perceiving acceleration positively (represented by Finn) highlight the significance of their own autonomy and competence as the “sources” constituting acceleration. For them, busyness appears enjoyable, as multitasking, efficiency and longer workdays are portrayed as positive attributes. This finding resonates with research suggesting that busyness can be perceived as a status symbol or “badge of honour” (Gershuny, 2005), as socially desirable time-use has shifted from maximizing leisure to maximizing hours spent working (Bellezza et al., 2017).

Finally, we contribute to methodological developments in organizational temporality research (see, e.g. Feuls et al., 2023) by combining IDIM approach – as a temporally embedded, repetitive data generation method – with the use of composite narratives. Specifically, we propose that composite narrative methods are particularly well equipped for reporting findings in temporality research. In previous studies, rigorous storytelling of temporally embedded experiences has been supported by, for instance, ethnographic methods (see Katila et al., 2020), but our study shows that semi-structured IDIM is also well suited for composing vivid narratives as it has potential in generating rich data. Importantly, composite narratives give room to participant voice and result in research that communicates findings powerfully in a way that is approachable and relatable to the readers, whether academics or not (Johnston, 2024). Hence, this method can be useful for disseminating research findings not only to scholars but also practitioners.

Our findings reveal a wide spectrum of hybrid workers’ acceleration experiences, ranging from neutral to enthusiastic to resistant. Specifically, the study shows that the acceleration associated with hybrid work may both enhance and weaken employees’ sense of temporal autonomy, resulting in hierarchical distinctions among them. As hybrid work becomes the standard arrangement in contemporary organizations, it is crucial to consider how it can be supported by temporal structures that treat employees equitably. Current normative and sometimes political stakes of hybrid work do not always acknowledge the role and power of temporal structures. For instance, the benefits of autonomously defining one’s worktimes and places are indisputable yet organizational policies (e.g. restricting remote days or strict disconnection policies) could guide employees toward less technology-intensive and hence less fatiguing hybrid work. Thus, it seems there is a continuous power struggle between what are perceived as sustainable and equal temporal structures in terms of accelerating hybrid work.

However, our findings on the sources of perceived acceleration offer potential points of intervention to challenge the “inevitability” of increasing work pace even in temporally flexible organizations. For instance, practices surrounding the use of communication technologies could be explicitly problematized, and organizational or team-level principles that acknowledge differences among hybrid workers could be developed. Overall, our study underscores the importance of recognizing the socially constructed and mutable nature of technologically induced acceleration when addressing time-related inequalities in organizations, as well as pressing well-being concerns such as digital fatigue and burnout.

While offering novel insights into the temporality of hybrid work, this study has two main limitations that also present important avenues for future studies. The first limitation stems from one participating organization. As NRC is rooted in one national, Nordic (i.e. western) culture, our data only reflected the experiences of employees embedded in this sociocultural and temporal environment. Western cultures predominantly rely on objective clock time, but in non-western cultures time can be perceived and valued differently (e.g. Ballard and Gossett, 2007; Ballard and Seibold, 2003; Saunders et al., 2004). Therefore, our findings on acceleration are not necessarily applicable to other, e.g. culturally diverse, organizational contexts, which should be studied in the future. Moreover, our methods were better equipped for understanding employee experiences than the structural dimensions of acceleration. Hence, structural aspects such as organizational norms, policies and technologies should be more explicitly studied in the future, for instance, by observing the actual work practices and uses of technologies.

Second, we did not focus on hybrid workers’ individual attributes such as age in our analysis, although age diversity (30–64 years) was well represented among our participants. The working population consists of several generations that differ in, e.g. their orientations to work and readiness in adopting new technologies (Meret et al., 2018). Hybrid worker’s age (i.e. reflections stemming from one’s lifespan, work history and competence in using communication technologies) may therefore have an influence on how acceleration and temporal autonomy are experienced. This remains a crucial avenue for future research.