abstract
- This study examines how Indigenous Zapatista-influenced activists enact temporal sovereignty to resist corporate water extraction, challenging dominant Western organizational temporalities. Through qualitative in-person research of the 2021 occupation of a water bottling plant in Mexico, I explore how activists transformed the site into a non-capitalist communal space, creating alternative temporal rhythms rooted in Zapatista principles such as `walking at the pace of the slowest¿ and collective autonomy. The findings reveal how activists rejected efficiency-driven deadlines, prioritized ecological cycles over productivity metrics, and fostered relational well-being through inclusive decision-making. These practices culminated in what I conceptualize as `time-less organizing¿ ¿ a framework for non-capitalist horizontal organizing that operates outside conventional time logics. The study contributes to the management and organizing literature by theorizing temporal sovereignty as resistance to imposed temporalities, extending critiques of stakeholder theory by exposing how corporate temporal constraints perpetuate marginalization, and demonstrating how communities reclaim autonomy through alternative temporal practices. The findings challenge assumptions of time as a resource to be managed for efficiency gains, offering future avenues of research for addressing grand challenges through decelerated and relational approaches. © 2025 Society for the Advancement of Management Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.