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In the Japanese city of Ise, the Grand Shrine Shinto temple (Ise Jingu) is known for housing the Imperial “mirror” relic and, particularly, for its unique construction. Since AD 660 this holy sanctuary has been rebuilt every twenty years in an identical manner. This ancestral tradition guarantees purity (Hladik, 2008) and prevents the institution it instantiates from ever fading away, meaning that it is maintained over time. In a different context, Jones and Massa (2013) studied the case of the Unity Temple designed in 1908 by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Due to the revolutionary use of materials for this building, the Unity Temple faced different challenges, enduring decades of oblivion before experiencing a rebirth. This renewed interest provided support for this modern architecture institution and a desire to maintain it. These two examples illustrate how the maintenance of institutions that are instantiated by a material artefact can express the issue of temporality in different ways. Temporality is understood here in a broad sense, that is, how time, which is a key meta-dimension of management (Chen & Miller, 2011), is instantiated in organizational and institutional life through a process of temporal structuring (Orlikowski & Yates, 2002). As such, temporality provides a “powerful way to view organizational phenomena”(Ancona et al., 2001, p. 660) as well as the institutional phenomena. Institutions can be considered temporal and their material instantiations can undergo and be challenged by the pressures of time, decay and damage, among others (eg, Boutinot & Delacour, 2022; Colombero & Boxenbaum, 2019; Jones et al., 2019; Jones & Massa, 2013 …