Communication‐related organizational structures and work group temporal experiences: the effects of coordination method, technology type, and feedback cycle on members' construals and enactments of time

Abstract

This study explores how differences in three communication‐related structures central to organizational work—coordination methods, workplace technologies, and feedback cycles—influence organizational members' experience of eleven dimensions of time—flexibility, linearity, pace, punctuality, delay, scheduling, separation, scarcity, urgency, and present and future time perspectives. Analyses of data from five residential services departments in a West Coast University revealed that differences in coordination method, technology type, and feedback cycle characteristics helped to shape members' experience of ten dimensions of time—flexibility, linearity, pace, punctuality, delay, separation, urgency, scarcity, and future and present time perspectives. As hypothesized, members of work groups whose feedback cycles included an extended task completion interval and high task variability exhibited a greater future‐time perspective than group members whose feedback cycles were characterized by brief intervals and low task variability.