How do managers handle their time? A descriptive study about the Temporal Dispositions of middle- and low-level managers : Exploring the correlation between Time urgency and Pacing styles

Sammanfattning: In modern business environment, time becomes more and more valuable resource fororganizations. The way managers will organize their time for completing managerialtasks, will influence not only job performance but inner feelings and job satisfaction,and, eventually, organizational performance. Research uses the term t emporaldispositions for analyzing how people are seeing the time. Temporal disposition hasdifferent elements and each of them are considering a different viewpoint of howpeople perceive the time. We found out that the connection between two basicelements of temporal disposition, time urgency and pacing styles, are not researchedproperly which leads into a misunderstanding about these concepts.  The purpose of this study is to d iscover the correlation between two different elementsof temporal dispositions (time urgency and pacing styles) through measuring the timeurgency and pacing styles of middle- and low-level managers. Further, this studyaims to enhance our understanding about Swedish managers’ time urgency andpacing styles. Finally, the thesis attempts to expand the academic field of temporaldisposition through e xplaining how the way managers are feeling about time (timeurgency) affects how they are distributing their time for completing managerial tasks(pacing styles). The quantitative research has been used in this study. A questionnaire with 10 itemshas been developed for this study, and 122 managers have been participated in thesurvey. The following correlation between time urgency and pacing styles has been found:time urgency is positively correlated with U-shaped pacing style and negativelycorrelated with steady-action style. We have not found any significant correlationbetween time urgency and deadline-action pacing style. Further, this study foundthat time patience (the opposite of time urgency) is positively correlated withsteady-action pacing style and negatively correlated with deadline-action pacingstyle. Similarly, results have shown that U-shaped pacing style is used both by timeurgent and time patient managers. Finally, we found that middle-level managers aremostly time urgent and using U-shaped pacing style when completing managerialtasks while low-level managers are mostly time patient and using steady-actionpacing style.