Subjective time in organizations: Conceptual clarification, integration, and implications for future research

• Author: Andreas W. Richter,Shi Tang,Sucheta Nadkarni
• Published date: 01 February 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2421
• Date: 01 February 2020

THE JOB ANNUAL REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT

ISSUE

Subjective time in organizations: Conceptual clarification,

integration, and implications for future research

Shi Tang |Andreas W. Richter |Sucheta Nadkarni

†

Cambridge Judge Business School, University

of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Correspondence

Shi Tang, Cambridge Judge Business School,

University of Cambridge, The Old Schools,

Trinity Ln, Cambridge CB2 1TN, United

Kingdom.

Email: st637@cam.ac.uk

†

Shortly after completing her work on this

manuscript, Sucheta sadly passed away. We

would like to dedicate this paper to the

inspiration, enthusiasm, and dedication that

Sucheta has given to us, and to the research on

temporal phenomena in organizations more

broadly.

Summary

Despite the rapid growth of organizational research on subjective time, the extant lit-

erature is fragmented due to a lack of conceptual clarification and integration of tem-

poral constructs. To address this fragmentation, we synthesize temporal research

from both organizational behavior and adjacent disciplines (i.e., strategy, entrepre-

neurship, and organizational theory) and introduce a framework that allocates tempo-

ral constructs according to their basic conceptual nature (trait–state) and level of

analysis (individual–collective). We employed the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count

text analysis to determine the trait–state property of the constructs and a coding

method to determine their level of analysis. This framework categorizes four generic

types of subjective time: individual temporal disposition,individual temporal state,

collective temporal state, and collective temporal disposition. We clarify the conceptual-

izations of the temporal constructs belonging to each of the four archetypes of sub-

jective time and review their key findings in the organizational literature. Based on

this integrative framework, we identify critical knowledge gaps in the current state

of research and chart a future agenda with specific suggestions.

KEYWORDS

multilevel research, subjective time, temporal constructs, trait–state distinction

1|INTRODUCTION

Time plays a central role in organizational life (Bluedorn & Denhardt,

1988; Shipp & Cole, 2015). But it does not merely exist objectively

as clock time. It is also experienced by organizational actors

1

in subjec-

tive ways, as indicated by expressions such as “time flies!”or “we are

pressed for time!”Objective time (i.e., clock time) is linear (progressing

in a unidirectional way), homogeneous (the passage of each unit is the

same), and uniform (identical across individuals and situations); in

contrast, subjective time manifests in richer forms that are nonlinear,

heterogeneous, and multiform (Ancona et al., 2001; Shipp & Cole,

2015; Shipp & Fried, 2014).

Organizational actors' subjective experience of time varies accord-

ing to their innate traits, ingrained beliefs, and influences of external

situations or events (Bluedorn, 2002; McGrath & Kelly, 1986; Shipp

& Fried, 2014). Recent decades have seen a proliferation of organiza-

tional behavior (OB) research examining a variety of temporal con-

structs that capture how time is subjectively valued, understood,

used, or perceived in organizational contexts (Kooij, Kanfer, Betts, &

Rudolph, 2018; Shipp & Cole, 2015; Shipp, Edwards, & Lambert,

2009). Despite this notable growth in research on subjective time,

the literature remains somewhat fragmented and would benefit from

conceptual clarification and integration on at least two fronts.

First, conceptual ambiguity caused by “jingle–jangle”fallacies (Block,

1995) pervades in the conceptualizations of many temporal constructs.

Jingle fallacy occurs when the same label is used to describe different

phenomena. Take future orientation as an example—Das and Teng

1

Following Ancona, Okhuysen, and Perlow (2001), we use the term “organizational actor”to

refer to the organizational unit across multiple levels of analysis—from individuals, to teams,

to organizations.

Received: 14 November 2017 Revised: 17 September 2019 Accepted: 15 October 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2421

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job J Organ Behav. 2020;41:210–234.

210

(1998) used this term to denote the length of time horizon underlying

one's consideration of the future, whereas Balliet and Ferris (2013) used

the same term to capture one's attentional focus on the future time

frame. Moreover, in the same study, Balliet and Ferris (2013, p. 300)

conceptualized future orientation as both “individual differences in

future orientation”(measured on a Likert scale) and “future‐oriented

states”(induced in experiments). However, these two phenomena are

grounded in fundamentally distinct theoretical perspectives—the for-

mer characterizes a dispositional tendency (i.e., trait), whereas the latter

features a malleable, situation‐elicited state. These jingle fallacies can

lead to severe confusions about a construct's content equivalence, con-

ceptual property (trait vs. state), theoretical basis (dispositional vs. situ-

ational), and appropriate operationalization (psychometrics vs.

experimental manipulation) (Chen, Gully, Whiteman, & Kilcullen, 2000).

On the other hand, jangle fallacy occurs when different labels are

attached to substantively identical phenomena (Block, 1995). For

instance, the concept labels of future orientation (Das & Teng, 1998)

and (future) temporal depth (Bluedorn, 2002) similarly represent the

time horizon of an individual's consideration into the future. Yet, these

two distinct labels have triggered divergent research trajectories—

the former was mostly adopted by strategy and entrepreneurship

research on managerial decision‐making (e.g., Martin, Wiseman, &

Gomez‐Mejia, 2016); the latter was more frequently used by OB

researchers to study employee outcomes (e.g., Bluedorn & Martin,

2008). Such jangle fallacies have hindered knowledge integration

across temporal research.

Second, existing studies are fragmented with respect to levels of

analysis. OB research has placed a skewed emphasis on individual‐

level studies (Shipp & Cole, 2015). However, scholars contend that

subjective time is an omnipresent phenomenon occurring across mul-

tiple organizational levels, and increasing research has examined tem-

poral constructs at collective levels, especially in adjacent disciplines

(George & Jones, 2000; Mosakowski & Earley, 2000). For example,

polychronicity—the proclivity toward the degree of simultaneity in

performing multiple work tasks (Slocombe & Bluedorn, 1999)—has

been studied at the team level both in OB (team polychronicity diver-

sity; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2014) and in strategy (top management

team (TMT) polychronicity; Souitaris & Maestro, 2010).

Furthermore, many studies examining collective temporal con-

structs did not explain the process of emergence from the individual

level to the higher level. Although both team polychronicity diversity

and TMT polychronicity reflect team‐level phenomena, they may theo-

retically emerge through different processes (dispersion vs. referent‐

shift consensus) from individual members' polychronicity and thus

require distinct operationalization approaches (Chan, 1998). Subjec-

tive time involves omnipresent phenomena occurring at multiple orga-

nizational levels, yet scattered temporal research at different levels

and the conceptual imprecision regarding the level and origin of (col-

lective) temporal constructs have severely limited our understanding

of subjective time as a multilevel phenomenon.

To address the fragmented state of research on subjective time,

our review offers an integrative framework that categorizes temporal

constructs based on two generic dimensions: (1) trait‐versus state‐like

property and (2) individual versus collective level of analysis. This, in

combination, yields four archetypes of subjective time: individual tem-

poral disposition, individual temporal state, collective temporal state,

and collective temporal disposition. We clarify the conceptualizations

of temporal constructs belonging to each archetype and review their

key findings in the organizational research.

Our review aims to contribute to the literature in three related

ways. First, we provide greater conceptual clarity, as well as facilitate

the integration of diverse and scattered studies on temporal

constructs. Second, the comparatively broad scope of this review

(incorporating studies at the individual and collective levels, from

OB as well as related disciplines) offers a more encompassing view

of organizational research on subjective time and thereby extends

and complements previously published reviews that have focused

exclusively on individual‐level temporal construct(s) (e.g., Kooij et al.,

2018; Shipp & Cole, 2015). Through the inclusion of both

individual‐and collective‐level studies, our ultimate goal is to encour-

age OB researchers to apply a “rich, complex, and meaty”multilevel

lens (Klein & Kozlowski, 2000) that bridges micro and macro under-

standings of subjective time. Third, we identify critical issues in the

extant literature and provide specific suggestions for future research

to address associated challenges. Overall, we seek to synthesize the

existing research in a systematic and informative manner, which high-

lights major knowledge gaps and charts rich and clear pathways to

move the field forward.

2|LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 |Scope of the review

We focused our review on subjective time in organizational contexts.

According to McGrath and Rotchford (1983, p. 61), subjective time

has two defining characteristics: (1) It features the subjective nature

of time that is “in the eye of the beholder”in contrast to objective

time, which is invariant to subjective interpretations; (2) it is consid-

ered a focal construct rather than a medium through which changes

occur

2

.

Because Bluedorn and Denhardt (1988)'s initial review of different

conceptions of time (e.g., objective and subjective) in the field of man-

agement, there has been a burgeoning interest in this topic among

organizational researchers (Shipp & Cole, 2015). Thus, we focused

on scholarly work published after 1988. Our review differs from

recent reviews and meta‐analyses (e.g., Kooij et al., 2018; Rudolph,

Kooij, Rauvola, & Zacher, 2018) with respect to our primary goal of

providing conceptual clarification and integration of various temporal

constructs across studies. The broader scope of this review allows us

to complement previously published reviews that predominantly

focused on trait‐like, individual‐level phenomena of subjective time

2

As studies on trajectories consider time as objective and the medium through which changes

occur, we did not include them in this review. We refer readers to other reviews on trajecto-

ries including Shipp and Cole (2015) for within‐individual changes and Bush, LePine, and

Newton (2018) for teams in transitions.

TANG ET AL.211