Cultural Approaches Toward Time in Global Organizations

The way we perceive time reveals a lot about our cultural values and differing approaches toward time management. Based on our own historical and societal settings, we have a particular worldview in which a dominant narrative colonizes the time framework and the way we perceive the past, present, and future. Different approaches toward these three “layers of time” lead to differing strategies in organizations and entire communities. They influence decision-making processes, building relationships, and defining sustainability. The aim of this chapter is to review the ways in which time can be perceived in the organizational context in different cultural circles and propose a new approach toward challenges caused by differing time perceptions across cultures. The first section focuses on time orientations in different cultures and the challenge of assigning such orientations to individuals. An examination of time orientations shows that the management of change varies a lot in past-oriented and future-oriented groups and impacts both short-term and long-term planning as well as attitude toward patience and speed in business contacts. When talking about cultural similarities and differences, we need to bear in mind that, in addition to ethnic, national, and regional characteristics, other important layers of cultures must be addressed such as gender, generation (X, Y, Z), social background, level of education, and many more, defined in the cultural mosaic approach presented in this chapter. The interdependence between the cultural layers of belonging to different generations and educational levels unquestionably has an impact on time perception and is addressed in the following section. In times of dramatically changing surroundings it is crucial to challenge not only the black-and-white scenarios that assign static time orientations to entire countries but also “used futures,” in which routinized practices are continued despite their “worn off” character. Therefore, the last sections focus on re-narrating time in the organizational context and on the leadership skills necessary to deal with differing time orientations and introduce narrative methods to rewind stories on time.