Chronos meets Kairos: The strategic enactment of time in corporate entrepreneurship

This study extends current knowledge on time and temporal work in entrepreneurship by exploring how corporate entrepreneurs navigate the temporal complexity underlying their situated entrepreneurial endeavors. By drawing on a sample of corporate entrepreneurs operating in large and established Finnish organizations, I develop a model of temporal work which unpacks the practices that corporate entrepreneurs skillfully deploy to leverage and influence the temporal structures that condition their entrepreneurial work. Moreover, the study elucidates the nature of time—represented by the two opposing temporal ‘forces’ of chronos and kairos underlying corporate entrepreneurship—as a pivotal element at play in corporate entrepreneurial processes, further illuminating the consequences of such temporal work for corporate entrepreneurs and their employing firms.