iving time a place in work and organizational ...

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Abstract. While time is of apparent importance in everyday organizational life little ..... The postulate of a bounded interval for all phenomena implies a life cycle.
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I. No more variables, please! (>iving time a place in w ork and organizational psychology Robert A. Roe

A b stra c t. While time is o f apparent importance in everyday organizational life little is known about it in W&O psychology. Behavioral phenomena are typically described and explained without reference to time. Longitudinal studies offer only snapshot images o f the ever changing reality. The result is an embarrassing incapacity to answer practical questions about the duration and timing o f what happens in organizations. Although methodological problems hamper temporal research, the main reason for the neglect o f time seems to lie in the conceptual basis o f our discipline, more specifically in the notion o f ‘variable’. Variables suffer from ambiguity with regard to inter- and interindividual variation, and are ill-suited to study temporal aspects of behavior. It is therefore proposed to drop ‘variables’ and replace them by ‘phenomena’ defined in terms o f onset, offset, duration and dynamics. This leads to a radical temporalist perspective that enables researchers to systematically study temporal aspects of behavior and organizational processes, and to develop a truly time-based W&O theory that is better equipped to answer theoretical and practical questions.

Ignorance of time There is something remarkable about the knowledge of Work & Organiz ational Psychology on the behavior o f people in organizations. Overseeing the theoretical and research literature o f today, it appears that much is known about personal and organizational attributes, and about their relationships, but very little about time. On the one hand, we are able to make fine grained distinctions between leadership styles, types of commitment, dimensions of organizational citizenship etc., and relying on results of meta-analyses we can produce long lists of associations between attributes such as satisfaction, commitment, absenteeism, stress, counterproductive behavior, team perfor mance or organizational effectiveness. Likewise, we have considerable knowledge about mediator and moderator effects and about specific models comprising multiple attributes. On the other hand we know very little about when behaviors are shown, in which sequence, how long they last, how stable they are, how they change over time, how long it takes before a change in one factor has an effect on another factor, and so on. Theoretical information about the duration and timing o f interventions such as selection or coaching, and about the time passing till they reach their maximum impact, is scarce as well. Almost any question containing a time-related interrogative pronoun is impossible to answer for W&O psychology. We do not know when employees start feeling dissatisfied, how long it takes to

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acquire a new leadership style, how fast people respond to a change in team composition, how stable managerial performance is, or how employee adjustment depends on the duration o f organizational restructuring. Our lack o f knowledge about time is well illustrated by the results o f a content analysis conducted on the titles and abstracts of articles that have appeared in the Journal of Applied Psychology and the European Journal of Work & Organizational Psychology during the years 2003-2004 (see Table 1) Table 1: Temporal referents in 2 journals, 2003-2004 (based on Psychlnfo)

Terms time or temporal development change period or episode or stage or phase dynamic or dynamics decrease or increase tempo or pace or speed or rate history or historic growth cycle or cyclic sequence duration rhythm or rhythmic curve year or years or yearly month or months or monthly week or weeks or weekly day or days or daily Total

JAP 23 21 11 8 8 1 6 4 3 1 1 0 0 0 23 5 6 5 204

11% 10% 5% 4% 4% 0% 3% 2% 1% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 11% 2% 3% 2% 100%

EJW OP 8 21% 12 31% 11 28% 4 10% 4 10% 4 10% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 5 13% 5% 2 0% 0 1 3% 100% 39

The terms time and temporal are rarely used and often do not refer to time at all (e.g. “for the first time”). The same is true for more popular terms such as development and change. Other time-related terms are hardly ever used. References to moments of measurement and durations (years, months etc.) are very rare as well. A closer look at articles in which terms such as development, change, growth and dynamics are used, shows that static conceptions prevail. E.g. models o f change often describe stages which people or organizations are supposed to pass without addressing the duration of each stage or the transitions between them. Our lack o f knowledge about time is paradoxical for a number of reasons. First of all, behavior extends in time (Bluedom, 2002). Eveiything people do, that is, applying for a job, going to the office, carrying out tasks, commu nicating with others, bullying others, getting tired, developing stress, re-

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porting sick “takes” time. None of these forms of behavior could he clelini'il without reference to time. The same is true for group and organiwilloiml processes which are supposed to influence and be influenced by imlivldiin! behavior. Secondly, for people in organizations time is salient and important. For employees is manifest in working hours and work schedules, deadlines, requirements on tempo o f performance. It is virtually impossible not to experience the duration o f time and time pressures in the course of the working day, perhaps with the exception o f being in a state of ‘flow’(Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Learning how to do certain tasks, applying for another job, or taking part in an organizational transition, keep people busy for a certain amount o f time. Managers seem to be preoccupied with time; when things happen, how fast they occur, and long they take are of obvious concern for them. Deadlines, lead times, growth rates, and organizational change phases, are key elements o f their job. As time is a scarce resource for them, they dedicate much attention to planning and monitoring performance and change. For managers and workers alike, time is always present: everything they do is framed by the days and weeks of the yearly calendar (Bluedom & Denhardt, 1988). Thirdly, it appears that there is a great deal of temporal regulation in human behavior at work. Either because it is required by organizational control systems, or spontaneously, people engage in planning, monitoring their behavior, and working faster or slower when needed. Although the efficient use of time has attracted research attention in earlier days (‘time-and-motion studies’), studies on self-regulation with regard to time have remained very scarce until recently (Claessens et al., in press). Thus, while time is needed to define human behavior and is highly visible in what people do in everyday life, it has largely been disregarded it in developing and testing the theories of W&O psychology. The imbalance in our knowledge is embarrassing in view of the questions emerging from organizational practice. Numerous questions can be posed that are very difficult to answer on the basis of our current scientific knowledge. How long will a salary increase keep motivating the employees? How many weeks or months does it take to become a competent sales person? How much do people differ in what they learn in the course of a year? By how many weeks can we reduce the recovery from burnout? What is the right moment for retraining employees? How long does resistance to change minimally last? Will we be able to have everyone ready for this job before the end of the year? How can we make sure that deadlines are met in 80% instead of 50% o f the cases; is 80% a feasible target anyway? What is the best moment to inform the employees in an organizational change trajectory? Does it matter whom we inform first? When practitioners in

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W&O psychology complain that theory is too far away from practice, the ignorance of time certainly contributes to it. Is this remarkable and uncomfortable situation unique for W&O psychology? The answer is no. There is accumulating evidence that adjacent disciplines, such as organizational behavior and management studies, find themselves in a similar state. According to an estimate by Wright (2002) up to 90% o f the research studies in OB are of a cross-sectional and non-time based nature. Several authors have expressed concern about the underexposure of time in theory-building and research (Ancona, Okhuysen, & Perlow, 2001; George & Jones, 2000; Mitchell & James, 2001). For instance George and Jones (2000, p. 658) have noted that: "many micro- and macro-organizational theories do not adequately incorporate such a time element and, thus, unintentionally distort the phenomena they are describing". Of course, the fact that other disciplines suffer from the same shortcoming does not alleviate the problem. It only emphasizes the need for understanding why this situation has arisen and how the gaps in our knowledge can de filled. Signs of improvement? True as it may be that time has been largely ignored in the past, there are also signs o f change. It is unmistakable that the interest in temporal issues is growing. In recent years some books have appeared with extensive treatments o f what time is, how it manifests itself in organizations and groups, and what is known about specific temporal phenomena (Bluedom, 2002; McGrath & Tschan, 2004). In the scientific journals we find evidence o f a growing number of longitudinal studies. Can these trends be taken as signs of improvement? Although an increasing awareness o f time and the necessity o f studying it, is to be welcomed and longitudinal studies represent a marked step forward, there are reasons for skepticism. If we take a closer look at longitudinal studies as conducted in W&O psychology it appears, first of all, that researchers are hardly interested in time itself. Their designs are primarily tools to investigate the direction o f causality or the sequential relationships between variables. For example, a longitudinal study by Koslowsky (1991) reports: “Results show that an increase in commitment causes a decrease in the intention to leave.” But very little attention is given to the length of time lags and the processes that are supposed to happen over time. Secondly, the techniques used to investigate relationships between variables, such as crosslagged panel analysis and SEM, focus on interindividual differences over time and provide little information about intra-individual changes. Third, most longitudinal designs use a very small number of measurements. Thus, in review of research a study on work demands and stress (De Lange et al., 2003), it appears that the 87% of all studies used 2 time points, and only 4% used more than 4 time points. Most studies use a wide spacing of time points with intervals of several months to years, which leaves much unobserved.

Since there are no signs that this practice will change and that the number ol‘ lime points will increase (and/or intervals will diminish), there is not much we can expect to learn from longitudinal studies. It is like taking two, three or lour snapshots rather than a movie and speculate about what has happened in between or what will happen later. Wlmt is totally lacking in W&O psychology is research on how historical conditions affect work and organizational phenomena. Although it is obvious that technological developments and changes in the global economy affect organizational structures and human behaviors, there seems to be no interest among researchers to examine these effects. Neither is there much evidence of interest in the possible effects of unique events such as “September 11” or Ilie Enron Scandal. ( Ihviously, other research designs would be needed to get a better coverage of time, but such designs are difficult to implement (Ancona et al., 2001; Itergh, 1993). A major practical difficulty is that obtaining multiple measurements takes much effort and time from researchers as well as subjects. Moreover, repeated measurement by means of questionnaires or interviews make subjects more aware of their behavior, which may induce changes. Building meaningful time series is one issue, analyzing them statistically is another one. Although a wide range o f statistical techniques, have been developed and applied in other disciplines, most o f these cannot be used with time-series as limited as we are used to in W&O psychology. Part of the problem might be solved if W&O researchers would adopt other and especially non-obtrusive techniques to produce longer time-series. Recently, researchers seem to become more interested in diary methods, which are better suited to generate longitudinal data than questionnaires, even though they have their own problems (Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003). I lowever, questionnaires are still the main data gathering technique, and the adoption of techniques that would allow dense recoding over long time periods, such as video, computer logs, or repeated internet surveys appears to he very low. Thus, we must conclude that there are as yet no reasons to believe that much will change and that W&O psychology will develop into a lime-based discipline. Problems with ‘variables’ Methodological problems, although significant, cannot fully explain why lime, being so prominent in everyday life, has remained in the shadow of our scientific inquiry. I propose that an explanation can be found in our way of thinking about reality and building theories. As only very few concepts in W&O psychology make explicit references to time, it seems to me that the very way of conceptualizing what happens to people in organizational contexts is at stake. More specifically, I think that using ‘variable’ as a key notion in our scientific language leads to propositions that are almost

inevitably timeless. Why is this so? Why do we use the notion o f variable? Can we build better theories without it? Let us consider these questions. It is worth noting the ubiquity of variables. Since the notion of variable gained popularity in the 1950’s, it is hard to find publications that do not employ the notion o f variable in formulating research questions and building models. This is true for W&O psychology and adjacent disciplines alike. A variable is a measurable attribute o f a class of objects - e.g. people, groups, organizations, situations - that can vary in intensity. Although originally meant to be the measured counterparts of theoretical constructs, variables are often considered to be construct and measure at the same time. In this sense, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, goal conflict, role stress, distributive justice, transformational leadership, team diversity, intergroup bias, and organizational success can all be considered as variables. An important assumption is that variables refer to a single attribute of an object only; whenever researchers suspect a variable to be multidimensional they replace it by a set of homogeneous variables (typically found by factor analysis). Due to the distinction between independent and dependent variables which links variables to research designs, relationships between variables have become focal in theory development. Nowadays, pairs o f variables are the elementary building blocks of our knowledge. Larger entities of knowledge, i.e. the triplets of moderator and mediator research and larger models, are composed from such pairs. An unfortunate ambiguity inherent in the notion of variable is that variation can' take place between as well as within objects. Thus, a variable can describe differences between individuals and changes o f individuals over time. As a consequence, a statement on the relationship between two variables can be interpreted in two ways. The assertion that a positive relationship between variables A and B exists, can mean (1) that variations between people on A are associated with variations between people on B; (2) that a change of A over time within an individual is associated with a change of B over time within the same individual. This ambiguity gives rise to the widespread fallacy that these two types of relationships are somehow linked to each other. The failure o f researchers to recognize that these two relationships are logically (and hence empirically, Roe, 2004) not connected may well have contributed to the lack o f attention for time in W&O research. Cross-sectional research, that is research on associations o f variables as measured with different people, is often mistakenly interpreted as implying that the association also holds within individual people. A more serious problem is that a variable can only express variation of the object involved, but not a change in the property it refers to. Thus, for exam ple, while the variable ‘trust’ can capture the difference between two people with regard to the degree of trust in e.g. management, or a change in intensity

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within one person over time, it does not allow to study trust as such. Culling imsl a variable blocks the view of trust as a dynamic phenomenon Mini develops slowly over time, sometimes suddenly drops, and then fails to re cover. The same argument holds for organizational commitment, transfommlional leadership and team diversity. When more than one variable refer to die same phenomenon, which often happens because of the homogenization of variables, it is almost impossible to develop an image o f the phenomenon lhat covers all variables simultaneously. E.g. the fact that there are several commitment variables prevents us from studying commitment as an integral phenomenon in which the relative intensity of aspects change overtime. Thus, it appears that the variable perspective restricts our view of people’s actions and interactions in organizations. It produces the illusion that the behaviors under study are always present, and prevents us from seeing how they emerge and disappear during phases o f the individual’s or organization’s life time. Variables, at least in the way they are conceived in W&O psychology and neighboring disciplines, are poorly suited for the study of change since they lack a referent to time and cannot capture cases in which the referred to attribute is absent. Considering that the vast majority of research problems are cast in terms of variables, it is no wonder that we find so little reference to time in the literature. We simply cannot expect questions or hypotheses about the ‘whether’ or ‘how’ aspects of phenomena to produce answers about the ‘when’ and ‘how long’. For this reason it is unlikely that future research in W&O psychology will tell us much about time, in spite o f the positive signs noted earlier. In order to make a real step forward in the scientific understanding of temporality, we need a radical shift in our way of thinking. We may do well to drop the notion of ‘variable’ altogether and choose an alternative perspective that brings time to the forefront. Radical temporalist perspective A useful starting point in the search for an alternative view is the observation that variables are always referred to by means of nouns. When aiming to study behavior in organizations - i.e. actions, processes, and events - this does not seem very appropriate. It would make more sense to use verbs for designating phenomena we are interested in. Thus, we might study the activity o f leading rather than leadership, the activity of creating rather than creativity, feeling satisfied rather than satisfaction. At first sight, this does not make much difference since verbs and nouns can be defined to refer to the same aspect of behavior. But anyone who tries to do without nouns and to formulate research questions in terms o f verbs will realize that there are important implications. While some old questions loose their meaning, several new questions arise. A crucial difference is that the verbal form will make it much more difficult to forget about time. Whatever the verb refers to - whether a cognitive or emotional process, a form of individual behavior, an

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interaction between group members, or an exchange between individuals and the physical or social environment - time will always be visible. In developing a new perspective we need a concept that explicitly refers to time. Elsewhere I have proposed (Roe, 2005) to adopt the notion of ‘phenomenon’ defined as an observable event (or series of events) happening to a particular object (e.g. individual, group, organization) during a certain time interval. Phenomena can be described by verbs. Examples are: leading, communicating, performing, and feeling committed. Phenomena are considered as temporally boundéd and dynamic. Temporally bounded means that there is a beginning and an end, dynamic means variation o f intensity of one or more attributes during the interval between these two points. The model in Figure 1 depicts these temporal features o f a phenomenon. The beginning is designated as onset, the end as offset. The interval between them is referred to as duration. The general term dynamics is used to refer to the pattern of changing intensity to be characterized by a set of parameters. The postulate of a bounded interval for all phenomena implies a life cycle notion. Thus, I assume that each phenomenon, whether individual or organizational, emerges at some point in time, has a certain course of development, and ultimately vanishes. Although this may seem odd at first sight, it seems quite appropriate if we realize that all forms of behavior are somehow linked to a period in which a person is employed or fulfills a certain role in an organization. Thus, satisfaction, stress, and leadership may very well be conceived in terms o f a life cycle. The same applies to group and organizational phenomena, such as cohesion, structure, and climate, which are bounded by the life-time o f the group or the organization. Unlike with variables, there is no need to assume that phenomena vary with respect to a single attribute only. Phenomena can be very well defined which respect to multiple attributes, and in many cases - including the examples just mentioned - this makes perfect sense. Figure 1: The temporal features o f a phenomenon (Roe, 2005) intensity

time

I lm introduction of temporal phenomena as an alternative for variables opens perspective on W&O psychology and adjacent disciplines that leaves no iuom lor timeliness and can hence be called ‘radical temporalist’ (Hoc, i'lMis), It gives theory development and research a very different orientation i-ompnred to the classical perspective of variables. Several time-related issues iInn were hitherto uncovered can now be addressed in sharply formulated imionrch questions. Thus, we can start to identify the temporal features of phenomena, establish their truly causal relationships, and assess the stability tim! change o f the phenomena as well as their relationships over longer periods o f time. For example, we may study when managers start displaying irmlership activities, how these develop over time, how stable they are, when switches o f styles occur. Similarly, we may investigate when and how employees develop commitment and under what conditions it declines and dlsnppears. As a next step, we may link the temporal parameters of two phenomena (e.g. onset, offset, duration, degree o f stability, moment of upward or downward change) to each other and identify sequential and «iitisnl dependencies. Finally, we may make long term comparisons and Investigate whether the phenomena, and/or their temporal relations have i hanged, possibly in connection with economic cycles, slow social trends, or generational succession. a

H um perspective is so much richer than the classical one, that it requires a nlrnlegic approach to research and theory development. For an extensive dismission o f a time-oriented research strategy and prototypical research questions, as well as for an overview o f research design issues and methods of temporal analysis, I refer to Roe (2005).

Hie proposed perspective poses many challenges. It makes us painfully nwnre of the limits of our current knowledge, and how much work will be inquired to fill the most conspicuous gaps in our knowledge. But it also uliows a way forward and offers a view o f W&O psychology as a discipline dint will be able to cover the many faces of time and to solve problems of practice in the future. Urfcrences

Ancona, D. G., Okhuysen, G. A., & Perlow, L. A. (2001). Taking time to integrate temporal research. Academy o f Management Review, 26(4), 512-529. Heigh, D. D. (1993). Watch the time carefully: the use and misue of time effects in management research. Journal o f Management, 19(3), 683-705. Itliiedom, A. C. (2002). The human organization o f time. Temporal realities- and experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, illuedom, A. C., & Denhardt, R. C. (1988). Time and organizations. Journal o f Management, 14(2), 299-320. Holger, N., Davis, A., & Rafaeli, E. (2003). Diary methods: Capturing life as it is lived. Annual Review o f Psychology, 54, 579-616. i laessens, B., Van Eerde, W., Rutte, C. G., & Roe, R. A. (in press). A review of the lime management literature. Personnel Review.

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Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Beyond boredom and anxiety. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. De Lange, A. H., Taris, T. W., Kompier, M. A. J., Houtman, I. L. D., & Bongers, P. M. (2003). The very best of the millenium: Longitudinal research and the DemandControl-(Support) model. Journal o f Occupational Health Psychology, 8 ,282-305. George, J. M., & Jones, G. R. (2000). The role o f time in theory and theory building. Journal o f Management, 26, 657-684. Koslowsky, M. (1991). A longitudinal analysis o f job satisfaction, commitment, and intention to leave. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 40(4), 405-415. McGrath, J. E., & Tschan, F. (2004). Temporal matters in social psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Mitchell, T. R., & James, L. R. (2001). Building better theory: Time and the specification o f when things happen. Academy o f Management Review, 26(f), 530547. Roe, R. A. (2004). De paradox van de tijd en de toekomst van A&O psychologisch onderzoek [The paradox o f time and the future o f research in W&O psychology]. Gedrag & Organisatie, 17(5), 342-350. Roe, R. A. (2005). Studying time in organizational behavior. (Manuscript submitted for publication). Wright, T. A. (2002). Dialogue: The importance o f time in organizational research. Academy o f Management Journal, 45, 343-345.