Journal of Organizational Behavior
Special Issue Call for Papers
Time Perspective and Organizational Behavior
Journal of Organizational Behavior (JOB) will publish a Special Issue on Time Perspective.
Background & Rationale for the Special Issue
Organizational behavior (OB) scholars have reaffirmed that "time is crucial to understanding the field of management" (Shipp & Fried, 2014: 1). Management and OB scholars have a long tradition of temporal research, largely with a focus on clock time (for an example of the emphasis given to clock time and its temporal aspects in organizations, see Bluedorn, 2002). Nonetheless, organizational research has neglected psychological time (i.e., the way individuals experience and perceive time) and one of its key aspects, time perspective or TP (i.e., "[t]he totality of the individual's views of his psychological future and psychological past existing at a given time"; see Lewin, 1951: 75).
We contend that, instead of limiting their focus to clock time, OB scholars should broaden their research into psychological time by examining the relationships between diverse TPs and organizational outcomes (e.g., job satisfaction or performance). As the experience and perception of time fluctuates between individuals and groups (e.g., Rousseau & Fried, 2001; Shipp & Fried, 2014), investigating TP would provide insights into how individuals make sense of their temporal experiences and the effects of this sense-making process (Weick, 1995) on organizational outcomes.
Accordingly, this Special Issue is dedicated to Time Perspective, with a main focus on Zimbardo and Boyd's (1999) TP conceptualization. By doing so, we hope to clarify the dynamics and complex relationships between TP and diverse OB themes (e.g., Organizational Citizenship Behavior, organizational justice, leader-member exchanges) in a broad range of organizational contexts. We also accept the investigations of the relationships between other time-related conceptualizations (e.g., temporal focus or occupational Future Time Perspective; see Shipp et al., 2009; Zacher & Frese, 2009 respectively) and OB themes.
Objectives of the Special Issue
- Provide insights into TP within the OB subfield.
- Better understand the person-based, temporal, and dynamical relationships among TP and diverse OB themes across organizational contexts.
- Encourage scholars to investigate the relationships between other time-related conceptualizations and OB themes.
Indicative and illustrative questions to energize these investigations include:
- How does Time Perspective influence the employment relationship and the psychological contract (e.g., see Rousseau, 1995, 2007)? Does TP influence the reactions of pre-retirement workers compared to other employees?
- Are job characteristics (e.g., Hackman & Oldham, 1976; Oldham & Fried, 2016), TPs, and employee outcomes related? How? Why?
- Do job stressors relate to TP? What kind of stressors (e.g., physical, task-related, role, social, career-related, and traumatic stressors; e.g., Sonnentag et al., 2014)? How exactly? Why?
- How are goals (e.g., Fried & Slowik, 2004; Locke & Latham, 1990) and their effects on performance influenced by TPs/temporal focus? What strategy(-ies) might an individual use to align his TPs/three focus, his goals, and his performance?
- How do diverse TPs/past, current, and future temporal focus effect information processing? Might TP/temporal focus play a role in the practice of evidence-based management (Barends et al., 2014) and the time investments made for gathering quality evidence?
The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2018. Papers to be considered for this Special Issue should be submitted online via the JOB journal website (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1379). Please direct questions about the submission process to jobedoffice@wiley.com. Prior to the initial submission deadline, authors who have questions about a potential project are encouraged to contact one of the Special Issue Guest Editors:
Indicative References
Barends, E., Rousseau, D. M., & Briner, R. B. (2014). Evidence-based management: The basic principles. Leiden: Center for Evidence-Based Management.
Bluedorn, A. (2002). The human organization of time: Temporal realities and experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Fried, Y., & Slowik, L. H. (2004). Enriching goal-setting theory with time: An integrated approach. Academy of Management Review, 29, 404–422.
Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16, 250–279.
Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in the social sciences: Selected theoretical papers. New York: Harper.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting & task performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Oldham, G. R., & Fried, Y. (2016). Job design research and theory: Past, present and future. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 136, 20–35.
Rousseau, D. M. (1995). Psychological contracts in organizations: Understanding written and unwritten agreements. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Rousseau, D. M. (2007). Developing psychological contract theory. In K. G. Smith, & M. A. Hitt (Eds.), Great minds in management: The process of theory development, 190–214. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Rousseau, D. M., & Fried, Y. (2001). Location, location, location: Contextualizing organizational research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 1–13.
Shipp, A. J., & Fried, Y. (2014). Time research in management: Using temporal ambassadors to translate ideas into reality. In A. J. Shipp, & Y. Fried (Eds.), Time and work (Vol. 1), 1–10. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Shipp, A. J., Edwards, J. R., & Lambert, L. S. (2009). Conceptualization and measurement of temporal focus: The subjective experience of the past, present, and future. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110, 1–22.
Sonnentag, S., Pundt, A., & Albrecht, A. G. (2014). Temporal perspectives on job stress. In A. J. Shipp, & Y. Fried (Eds.), Time and work (Vol. 1), 111–140. East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Zacher, H., & Frese, M. (2009). Remaining time and opportunities at work: Relationships between age, work characteristics, and occupational future time perspective. Psychology and Aging, 24, 487–493.
Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. N. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-differences metric. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1271–1288.