Time and Space in Strategy Discourse: Implications for Intertemporal Choice

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2687
• Author: Donal Crilly
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• Date: 01 December 2017

Strategic Management Journal

Strat. Mgmt. J.,38: 2370–2389 (2017)

Published online EarlyView 18 August 2017 in WileyOnline Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/smj.2687

Received 7 March 2016;Final revisionreceived 20 June 2017

Time and Space in Strategy Discourse: Implications

for Intertemporal Choice

Donal Crilly*

Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School,

London, UK

Research summary: When describing the future, executives draw analogies between time and

space (“we are on the right path,” “the deadline is approaching”). These analogies shape

how executives construe the future and inuence attitudes to action with long-term benets but

short-term costs. Ego-moving frames (“we are approaching the future”) prompt a focus on the

present, whereas time-moving frames (“the future is approaching”) underscore the advent of

the future as inevitable. Ultimately, action that prioritizes long-term returns depends both on

how executives conceive of the future and whether they believe they can engender favorable

outcomes. This balance between recognizing the inevitability of the future (time-moving frame)

and the capacity to shape outcomes (control beliefs) stands in contrast to the more agentic forms

of discourse that are dominant in strategy.

Managerial summary: Executives often prioritize maximizing immediate returns over investingto

build a long-term competitive advantage. How they think about the future offers one explanation

for this short-termism. This article distinguishes two ways of framing the future with implications

for decision-making. Are we approaching the future (the ego-moving frame) or is it approaching

us (the time-moving frame)? As long as executives have condence in their ability to achieve

forecasted results, they focus on long-term returns in their decision-making when they recognize

the advent of the future as inevitable (the time-moving frame). In contrast, though executives use

the ego-moving frame to show that they are active agents, they weigh future returns less heavily

when framing the future in this way. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

When corporate executives talk about the future,

they routinely employ the vocabulary of space and

motion. For instance, “to accelerate performance

improvement,” Procter & Gamble is “taking an

important strategic step forward” (Laey, 2014),

while Pzer is “on the right path” and “contin-

ues to move forward to having a pipeline that is

both robust and sustainable” (Read, 2014). Using

spatial language to describe the future is not inci-

dental. The physical realities of space and motion

Keywords: intertemporal choice; language; behavioral;

frame; discounting

*Correspondence to: Donal Crilly, London Business

School, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4SA, UK. E-mail:

dcrilly@london.edu

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

help people conceive of time (Lakoff & Johnson,

1980). Linguistics research points to two distinct

ways of experiencing time (Boroditsky & Ramscar,

2002): the time-moving frame, in which the future

“happens” and moves toward the speaker (e.g.,

“the deadline is approaching”), and the ego-moving

frame, in which an agentic speaker moves toward

the future (e.g., “we are approaching the deadline”).

How executivesconstrue the future is a core issue

for strategy. Firms often face a tension between

managing short-term earnings and investing for the

long term (Litov, Moreton, & Zenger, 2012). Spa-

tiotemporal language— despite featuring promi-

nently in corporate discourse— has remained under

the radar of strategy scholars. The dominant expla-

nations in strategy as to why executives prioritize

Time and Space in Strategy Discourse 2371

the short- or long-term consequences of their deci-

sions rest on incentives (Coles, Daniel, & Naveen,

2006). Nonetheless, executives adopt short-term

strategies even when long-term compensation plans

are in place (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commis-

sion, 2011). Executives do not always respond

rationally to incentives, and there is good reason

to delve deeper into the subjective, constructed

nature of time and its implications for economic

decisions (Bluedorn, 2002; Kaplan & Orlikowski,

2013). Analogies between time and space are one

important way through which time is constructed in

the mind.

In this article, I ask: Do analogies between time

and space reect, and even inuence, how exec-

utives address the trade-off between the short and

long term? Field evidence in linguistics associates

time-moving frames with greater conscientiousness

and attention to pending events than ego-moving

frames (Duffy, Feist, & McCarthy, 2014). The

future seems to loom larger when it “happens”

to us. However, the time-moving frame risks a

sense of fatalism. Strategy scholars note that a

sense of agency— in particular, the perception

that one can actively inuence events and their

outcomes— prompts long-term planning and action

(Hodgkinson, 1992). As Bandura (2000, p. 120)

contended, “Unless people believe that they can

produce desired effects and forestall undesired ones

by their actions, they have little incentive to act.”

Thus, I argue that corporate executives prioritize

projects with long-term returns both when they

recognize the advent of the future as inevitable

(the time-moving frame) and when they trust

their ability to achieve forecasted results (control

beliefs). Temporal framing and control beliefs

are simultaneously important in inuencing how

managers address the trade-off between the short-

and long-term.

I conduct a mixed methods study. The rst study

sheds light on rms’ use of spatial language in their

calls with analysts and informs propositions, which

I investigate in subsequent studies involving man-

agers and nance professionals. I assess whether

time- and ego-moving temporal frames are associ-

ated with different orientations toward the future

(Study 2) and link frames and control beliefs to

decision-making in the face of a trade-off between

short-and long-term returns (Study 3). A supple-

mentary study highlights that investors are similarly

sensitive to the way in which the future is framed.

Investors support long-term strategies when these

are communicated using language that underscores

the advent of the future (time-moving frame) as well

as the capacity of the rm to shape future outcomes

(control beliefs).

The contribution is an understanding of intertem-

poral choice in strategy that illustrates the role of

spatial cognition in addressing the tension between

the present and the future. Spatial language

reects and structures perceptions of the future

in concert with other psychological attributes.

The implications are provocative both for man-

agerial decision-making and for communicating

with the markets. Whereas strategy discourse

conventionally emphasizes the agency of the rm,

agentic discourse has to be counterbalanced with an

understanding that the advent of the future looms

large.

Spatial Perception and Time Construal

Imagine that a meeting originally scheduled for

next Wednesday is moved forward two days. On

which day will it now take place? When this

question is put to English speakers, approximately

50% answer “Monday,” while 50% answer “Fri-

day” (Ramscar, Matlock, & Dye, 2010). Ambigu-

ity arises because people conceptualize space and

time in different ways, leading to divergent under-

standings of what “moving forward” means when

used in relation to time. “Monday” answers occur

when respondents interpret the question through

a time-moving frame: Moving the meeting for-

ward means it moves closer to the listener. “Fri-

day” answers occur when respondents interpret the

question through an ego-moving frame: Moving the

meeting forward means rescheduling it to a later

period because the self (or, ego) movesthrough time

and the meeting is displaced a further 2 days ahead

of the self (McGlone & Harding, 1998).

The discipline of cognitive linguistics concerns

itself with the psychological processes that underlie

the production of language. Metaphors help people

conceive of abstract constructs (e.g., time) in terms

of objects that they experience concretely (e.g.,

space) (Levinson, 2003). Analogies between time

and space exist in almost all cultures (Sinha et al.,

2011) and are expressed in gurative language,

for example, “time ies,” “we are heading toward

bankruptcy.” Mappings between time and space

may be hard-wired in the brain. For instance, people

construe time differently when they are moving than

Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Strat. Mgmt. J.,38: 2370–2389 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/smj