Temporal diversity and team performance: the role of the intervening mechanisms of temporal leadership and shared temporal cognitions within self-managed teams
Abstract
Organizations increasingly make the transition from the traditional hierarchical model to a flat type of organization with self-managed teams to increase the tempo, pace and decision making of the teams. Research on self-managed teams, diversity, and leadership has delivered plentiful of valuable information. However, several researchers have identified temporal characteristics such as time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity; and temporal leadership as a key agenda for future research because time has been a neglected issue in studying team research. This study investigates the effects of temporal individual differences on team performance within scrum teams, and examines the intervening mechanism of temporal leadership and shared temporal cognitions on the team performance. In total 30 team leaders and 128 team members participated in this quantitative study. Results provided no empirical evidence for the moderated mediation model. We did find some significant links between temporal diversity and team performance.
Keywords: Temporal diversity, temporal leadership, shared temporal cognition, team performance, self-managed teams
Master Thesis: Business Administration, University of Amsterdam Track: Leadership and Management
Name: Floris van der Linden Student number: 10663819
Thesis supervisor: Dr. Claudia Buengeler Due date: 2017, August 17
Statement of originality
This document is written by student Floris van der Linden who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ... 5
2. Theoretical background and hypotheses ... 9
2.1. Temporal diversity and team performance ... 9
2.2. Time Urgency Diversity ... 11
2.3. Time Perspective Diversity ... 13
2.4. Pacing Style Diversity ... 14
2.5. Polychronicity Diversity ... 16
2.6. The Moderating Role of Temporal Leadership ... 19
2.7. The Mediating Effect of Shared Temporal Cognition ... 22
3. Method ... 25
3.1 Research Design: Organizational Context ... 25
3.2 Measurements ... 26
3.2.1. Independent Temporal Variables ... 26
3.2.2. Moderator: Temporal Leadership ... 29
3.2.3. Mediator: Shared Temporal Cognition ... 29
3.2.4. Dependent variables ... 29
3.2.5. Control variables ... 30
3.3 Data aggregation ... 30
5. Discussion ... 38
5.1 Theoretical implications ... 38
5.1.1. Temporal diversity and team performance ... 38
5.1.2. Team temporal leadership ... 39
5.1.3. Shared Temporal Cognition ... 40
5.2 Managerial implications ... 41
5.3 Limitations and future research ... 42
6. Conclusion ... 44
References ... 45
Appendices ... 53
Appendix A: Hierarchical regression results ... 53
Appendix B: Graphs simple slopes analyses ... 57
Appendix C: Survey Questions ... 61
Survey for team member ... 61
1. Introduction
Time is an important research variable at the team and individual level of analysis.
Kozlowski and Bell (2003) assert that time remains “perhaps the most neglected critical issue” in team research. Another important aspect within the organizational context that “teams will become the primary unit of performance in high-performance organizations” (p. 119) is now a fact of organizational life (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993; Millikin, Hom, & Manz, 2010). At the team level, researchers have focused on the temporal traits within groups or work teams, and the individual analysis focuses on the individual temporal characteristics and behaviors. Despite its importance, time has been an underexplored topic within studies of teams and team performance. Few researchers have identified temporal characteristics such as time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity; and temporal leadership as a key agenda for future research because time has been a neglected issue in studying team research (Eisenhardt, 2004; Mohammed, Hamilton, & Lim, 2009; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011).
Studies on the impact of temporal diversity on team performance are scarce. Several researchers have been highlighting the importance of temporal diversity and bringing it to the foreground (Mohammed & Harrison, 2007). In addition, Mohammed and Nadkarni (2011) attempt to draw attention to time-based characteristics as an under-explored research form of individual differences operating in a team. These researchers argue that temporal features are not always visible or taken into consideration when studying team performance and that their impact on team functioning is regularly overlooked (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). Mohammed and Harrison (2013) argue that temporal characteristics seldom make the research list when linked to team performance. They advocate that in practice, temporal individual differences among team members likely operate “beneath” awareness and are often not mentioned in the everyday
language of getting work done in teams. However, they suggest that persistent differences in how team members think about and value their time can profoundly influence the team performance, either positively or negatively (Mohammed & Harrison, 2013). More research is required to better understand the influence of diversity in temporal individual difference on team
performance. Therefore, the relationship between temporal diversity and team performance will be investigated.
Temporal leadership has been found to moderate this relationship between temporal diversity and team performance (Horwitz, 2005; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011; Mohammed & Harrison, 2013). Temporal leadership is about scheduling deadlines, synchronizing team member behaviors and allocating their team’s time (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). In this paper, we will examine the moderating role of temporal leadership in a context of self-managing teams. Studying temporal diversity, temporal leadership and team performance within self-managing teams have not delivered any results in the literature. We suggest that this has never been done before and therefore we advocate that this is a new link within the academic. Furthermore, we would like to better understand the role of temporal leadership by introducing shared temporal cognition as the mediating mechanism through which temporal leadership has an impact on temporal diverse teams. It has been suggested that when team members have strong shared temporal cognitions, temporal leadership is less needed as the team members have strong shared ideas for pacing, deadlines and the alignment of task activities and temporal ambiguity (Santos, Passos, Uitdewilligen, & Nübold, 2016a).
In sum, there is a strong need for a theoretical and empirical foundation of the impact of temporal diversity on team performance. This study focuses on temporal diversity’s effects on team performance and the moderating role of temporal leadership on this relationship. More
specifically, this study addresses the following question: what are the effects of temporal
individual differences on team performance, and what is the role of the intervening mechanisms of temporal leadership and shared temporal cognitions within self-managed teams? Hossain, Bannerman, and Jeffery (2011) assert that global software development experiences
geographical, sociocultural, and temporal differences. These differences may pose challenges of coordination, communication, and control. Hence, there is a need for formulating strategies and tools to address the challenges of global software development. The study analyzes the impacts of temporal individual differences on team performance within scrum teams. The researcher works with a moderated mediation model. Dependent variables of the study include performance and innovation, and independent variables include time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity. Temporal leadership is considered as moderator and shared temporal cognition is considered as mediator.
The researcher investigates the relationship between team temporal diversity and team performance, moderated by temporal leadership and mediated by shared temporal cognition. The main goal of this study is to contribute to the field of temporal individual differences and
temporal leadership within self-managed teams. In addition, it is also a response to calls from researchers to be more explicit in incorporating time into team research (Mohammed & Harrison, 2007; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011).
Secondly, we highlight two types of intervening mechanisms by which temporal diversity may influence team performance. First, we are studying the moderating effect of temporal
leadership between temporal diversity and team performance. Next, we examine if shared temporal cognitions mediate the moderating effect of temporal leadership on the relationship between temporal diversity and team performance.
2. Theoretical background and hypotheses 2.1. Temporal diversity and team performance
In creating teams, organizations are more and more integrating diverse background, knowledge and expertise of employees within work-team structures. Using diverse teams, consisting of members of diverse abilities and backgrounds, have become a growing practice in modern organizations. According to Katzenbach and Smith (2005), a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993; Katzenbach & Smith, 2005). Self-managed teams share most of the features of teams; however, what distinguishes them from other teams is their control of the decision-making process. The fundamental idea of self-managing teams is that the responsibility and authority of the decision process is given to the team members instead of the organizational hierarchy (Goodman & Haran, 2009). It could directly influence the team effectiveness since it brings decision-making authority to the level of operational problems and uncertainties and, thus, increase the speed and accuracy of problem solving (Moe, Dingsyr, & Kvangardsnes, 2009; Tata & Prasad, 2004). This paper in particular studies scrum teams. Scrum is a popular software development method, with the goal to organize teams such that they can create knowledge effectively and efficiently and to deliver as much quality software as possible (Beedle, Devos, Sharon, Schwaber, & Sutherland, 1999). Scrum teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. In short, there are three major roles within scrum teams: the product owner, the scrum master and the development team. Each role is responsible for different parts of the development process, and together they form a (self-managing) scrum team (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2011).
anticipate high performance. However, in reality, research has shown that simply creating diverse teams will not make them more effective; rather the success of teamwork is largely dependent on the right composition of individual attributes (Horwitz, 2005). Therefore, bringing diverse individuals together in high-performance teams remains a big challenge for many organizations.
The main question in diversity research is how differences between team members affect group process and performance. In broad terms, diversity research has largely been divided into two research traditions: the social categorization and the information/decision making
perspective. The starting point of the first perspective is the notion that similarities and differences between work group members form the basis of categorizing self and other into groups, making a distinction between similar in-group members and dissimilar out-group
members. Group members tend to favor in-group members over out-group members, and may be more satisfied with and attracted to the group when it is homogenous and when they are similar to the other group members. The similarity/attraction perspective complements the social categorization perspective, and it suggests that individuals seek to work with those that are similar to them. In contrast, the information/decision-making perspective points out the positive effects of work group diversity. The starting notion is that diverse groups may possess a broader range of knowledge, skills, and abilities, giving groups a larger pool of resources and setting up the stage for more creative and innovative group performances (Pieterse, Van Knippenberg, & van Ginkel, 2011; Van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007a).
When it comes to the typologies of diversity, most research has focused on demographic (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity, age) and less easily discernable, but more job-related attributes such as differences in functional or educational backgrounds. Other researchers argue about the
importance of not job-related differences of diversity such as personality, attitudes and values (Van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007a). Jackson and Joshi (2001) have made a distinction between diversity on relationship-oriented attributes and task-oriented attributes, which they categorized into diversity on readily detected attributes and diversity on underlying attributes (Jackson & Joshi, 2011). However, there is one typology of individual differences important to team success that is commonly excluded from lists generated by researchers and practitioners: temporal (time-based) diversity, including time urgency, time perspective, pacing style, and polychronicity (Mohammed & Harrison, 2013). The ticking clock has almost become an obsession in modern organizations. How members think and evaluate time can influence the team performance, given the fact that all teams have some implicit or explicit time constraint (Mohammed & Harrison, 2013).
2.2. Time Urgency Diversity
The time urgency literature suggests that people differ in their propensity to engage in several time-oriented behaviors, including overall attention to time, performing many tasks simultaneously, being impatient, being punctual, controlling deadlines, and scheduling tasks. Time-urgent individuals tend to be more attentive to time and deadlines. This individual might act as a pacer of the group, declaring concerns about time, and focusing on timely completion of the assigned tasks and subtasks (Waller, Giambatista, & Zellmer-Bruhn, 1999). The literature further acknowledges that time urgency is a stable personality trait and that time urgent individuals are concerned that temporal resources are scarce and must be conserved. Time urgency reflects an internally imposed constraint, whereas time pressure reflects an externally imposed constraint (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). Furthermore, time-urgent individuals are
chronically hurried, trying to fulfill all of their ambitions and commitments under deadline situations that they have often created. In contrast to this, less time-urgent individuals tend to underestimate the passage of time and they tend to be less attentive regarding remaining time resources (Waller, Conte, Gibson, & Carpenter, 2001). This behavior may lead to ignore or miss important deadlines, and may indicate a need to intensify one’s work pace when a deadline approaches (Rastegary & Landy, 1993; Waller et al., 2001). In scrum teams, the hurried nature of time urgent individuals may be beneficial because of working in sprints and meeting strong deadlines, however it could become a liability in those organizations in which time pressure has been found to be an impediment, such as complex information processing and creative problem solving (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). The contrast between members who feel chronically hurried (time urgent) and members who underestimate the passage of time (non-time urgent) are likely to create frictions and ambiguities about schedules and deadlines (Mohammed &
Nadkarni, 2011). Time-urgent individuals, even when having external deadlines other than the project, frequently make their own internal timelines. These internal markers are then
strategically used to utilize the time remaining for the completion of task. Mohammed and Nadkarni (2011) argue that these individuals consider time as the enemy. They usually commit more activities than can reasonably fit into the allotted period. Hence, they are compelled to continuously check for the time remaining for the activities. On the other hand, non-time urgent people underestimate the value of time. They appear less hurried; however, they are constrained by time resources.
Creation of knowledge and learning is one of the main activities of scrum teams where ambiguity and fluctuation are abounded (Takeuchi & Nonaka, 1998). It is a complex information processing where time plays a crucial part because of the fact teams are working in sprints and
need to deliver a “done”, usable and potentially releasable product within a time-box of one month or less (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2011). Because of working in sprints and meeting firm deadlines, scrum teams, therefore, are required to have more time urgent team members who are attentive to the time. Furthermore, we argue, if temporal diversity occurs, it will likely create ambiguities, frictions, tensions and stress between time urgent and less time-urgent members because of the existing deadlines and hurried nature of the scrum method itself (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2011). These, in turn, may lead to inferior performance and loss of efficiency. We propose that time urgency diversity is negatively related to team performance.
Hypothesis 1a: Time urgency diversity has a negative influence on the team performance.
2.3. Time Perspective Diversity
With respect to the time, psychological studies focused more towards the time-related variables. Moreover, individuals differ in the way they perceive and think about their past, present and future. Time perspective further labeled as “temporal focus” and “time orientation”, points out the relative importance of past, present and future time frames. According to the time perspective model, the five components have been attributed to risky behaviors, social
relationship, procrastination, and preference for delayed rewards. These components divide into past, present, and future perspectives. For this study, the focus will be on the present and future orientation. Future oriented members are likely to create a vision, engage in long-term planning whereas, present oriented members are likely to act rather than outlining the plans (Mohammed & Harrison, 2013). According to Mohammed and Harrison (2007), diversity of time perspective helps the individual to ensure that both proximal and distal objectives are addressed.
Furthermore, they argue that the top management teams composed of only visionaries with members who are grounded only in the “here and now”, are unlikely to meet both exploration and exploitation performance requirements (Mohammed & Harrison, 2013). Within scrum teams, having differences in time perspective behavior seems beneficial because this will encompass the present and future oriented behaviors of team members to perform more effectively. At the start of any project, team members come together for a meeting to organize and develop the project plans. Other than that, the scrum teams meet daily for discussing the progress and understanding of the work strategies in accomplishing the planned goals of the project (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2011). It is argued that diversity in time perspective enhances the planning process by considering both present and future oriented perspectives. Researchers have shown that prior planning while starting any mission improves the team performance. Therefore, it is proposed that scrum teams with time perspective diversity members discuss relevant present and future orientations. The time perspective diversity improves the task performance of the team to make it more efficient and effective. Therefore, it following hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 1b: Time perspective diversity has a positive impact on the team performance.
2.4. Pacing Style Diversity
Pacing style relates to the distributing pattern of effort over time available to complete the task of the team and in working towards deadlines. These temporal preferences influence the rate of activities in the work settings. When setting deadlines, some people take action immediately to complete the task as soon as possible (early action), while others wait for the deadline to draw
near before they start working on the task (deadline action) (J. Gevers, Mohammed, &
Baytalskaya, 2015; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). Pacing style represents a continuum of how closely the intensity of the work is paced to the deadline (J. Gevers et al., 2015). Gevers and colleagues define pacing style as “behavioural tendencies regarding the distribution of effort over time in working towards deadlines.” It has been shown that pacing style influences employees’ behaviour (e.g. planning), feelings (e.g. control of time, occupational self-efficacy), and
outcomes at work (e.g. job performance, working overtime) (J. Gevers et al., 2015). At the individual level, the match between pacing style and work requirements may have implications for person-job fit and gives rise to the positive or negative experiences. For example, working in an environment with short and fluctuating due dates such as the newspaper industry, employees with early or steady action style may not be as comfortable as deadline action pacing style employees. At the team level, the importance of understanding this concept is also relevant when members need to coordinate with each other on the distribution of effort over time (J. Gevers et al., 2015). Differences in pacing style create a form of temporal diversity within teams that can either have a positive or negative outcome. For example, in coordinative complex tasks, team members with an early action style start the project; those with a steady action style maintain project momentum; and deadline-action team members finish the project (Mohammed & Harrison, 2007; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). In dynamic projects like these, diversity of pacing style is suitable. However, pacing style diversity may also create ambiguities as different patterns of work distribution may conflict with each other. In addition, tensions may arise when early and steady action style experience the work patterns of a deadline action style, which leave little room for revising and adjusting the teams work, which in turn could influence the quality of the team performance (J. M. Gevers, Claessens, Van Eerde, & Rutte, 2009; Mohammed &
Nadkarni, 2011)
Pacing style diversity issues have remained unaddressed because individuals rarely verbalise or are aware of their own style (J. Gevers et al., 2015; J. M. Gevers, Rutte, & Van Eerde, 2006). Within scrum teams, the strong deadlines and hurried nature of the work implies that individuals need to coordinate and distribute their work effort in such a way that they can meet the deadlines and that they can work together effectively. It is argued that pacing style diversity is not desirable due to conflicting patterns of different action styles, which may lead to tensions or ambiguities. Next to that, the work has to be finished within a certain time constraint, which means that the deadline-action style members may encounter problems towards the end of a sprint when unforeseen circumstances arise with the result of not finishing the job on time. This, in turn, may affect the team process, which could influence the quality of the team performance. We propose the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1c: Pacing style diversity is influenced negatively on the team performance.
2.5. Polychronicity Diversity
According to Hall (1983), there is a fundamental difference between a monochronic and polychronic time oriented individual. Monochronic time oriented individuals prefer to complete one task before becoming involved with another task, whereas polychronic time oriented
individuals prefer to be engaged in several tasks at once (Slocombe & Bluedorn, 1999). Bleudorn (2002, p. 51) defines polychronicity as “the extent to which people (1) prefer to be engaged in two or more tasks or events simultaneously and are actually so engaged (the preference strongly implying the behavior and vice versa), and (2) believe their preference is the best way to do
things.”
In contrast, monochronicity refers to events where before moving to another task, the individual completed the first task. Basically, some entities prefer to work on several tasks at the same time, switching back and forth between activities, while other prefer to complete one task before starting the next one (Kaplan, 2009). Monochronicity and polychronicity should be seen as poles of a single continuum, ranging from the preference of finishing one task before
beginning another task (lower polychronic of higher monochronicity) to the other pole of preference for performing two or more tasks simultaneously (higher polychronic). It is worth emphasizing that polychronic individuals do not refer to how many tasks are to be accomplished in a given timeframe, instead it refers to the degree to which one prefers being engaged in several tasks simultaneously. At the individual level, Bluedorn, (2002) has conceptualized
polychronicity as an individual character trait and that an individual’s temporal preference is assumed to be relatively consistent across time and contexts (Bluedorn, 2002; Kaplan, 2009). However, at the group level of analysis, polychronicity has largely been neglected due to its working parameters. Kaplan (2009) has characterized team polychronicity as the extent to which the group members collectively prefer to be engaged in multiple tasks or events within any given length of time and actually are so engaged (the preference strongly implying the behavior and vice versa) and (2) belief their preference is the best way to do things” (p. 107) (Kaplan, 2009, p.107).
Research on polychronicity suggests that differences between the preferences of high and low polychronic members are likely to be a double-edged sword for team performance and it could affect team performance in several ways. On the one hand, schedules and task priorities of monochronic and polychronic members are often contradictory. Where, monochronic individuals
excel at deadline adherences, polychronic individuals struggle with punctuality. These
conflicting outcomes may increase dissatisfaction within the team and will decrease motivation and commitment to achieve goals, each of which can reduce team performance (Bluedorn, 2002; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2014). According to information processing perspective, the difference between team members could enhance the performance in the situation where the diversity between team members provides an expanded range of task-relevant expertise and information. Switching back and forth between tasks may lead to different insights and learning (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2014; Van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007b). Additionally, complementary models of person-environment fit suggest that the advantages of diversity may occur when behaviors or working styles are complementary (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2014).
Within scrum teams, individuals and team members are working within a structured period with strong deadlines. In order to make enough progress on each project to meet the deadlines, time needs to be shared and people must be aware of each other’s activities and tasks. Since all events are time-boxed events and provided with the fact that the team must understand what has to be done after completion of a task, it is, therefore, desirable that team members finish a task and explaining the meaning of “done”, before starting another task (Schwaber &
Sutherland, 2011). This strict plan of working resembles monochronic behaviors. In contrast, there is not a lot of room for polychronic behaviors because of the way the work is structured. If team members show different (more polychronic) behaviors, they may lead to conflicting interest and ambiguities, which in turn may affect the team performance. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:
2.6. The Moderating Role of Temporal Leadership
Temporal leadership is proposed to positively influence the negative effects of diversity in time urgency, diversity in pacing style, and diversity in polychronicity on team performance. Likewise, temporal leadership will moderate the hypothesized positive relationship between time perspective and team performance. Temporal leadership has performed the role of moderator between temporal diversity and team performance in such a way that time urgency and pacing style were more positively related to team performance. In addition to that, in the same study, temporal leadership exerted a positive main effect on team performance (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011).
Mohammed and Nadkarni (2011) defined the team temporal leadership as leader
behaviors that aid in structuring, coordinating, and managing the pacing of task accomplishment in a team. Scheduling (e.g., reminding teams of deadlines, setting interim milestones),
synchronizing (e.g., coordinating the team so that work is finished on time), and allocating temporal resources (e.g., building in time for contingencies and problems) are the set of behaviors that comprise of temporal leadership (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). Temporal leadership captures the task-oriented behaviors focused on temporality, rather than the relationship-oriented behaviors; however, temporal leadership is distinct from task-focused leadership. Task-focused leadership reflects behaviors in which there is a focus on reward contingencies, exchange relationships, initiation, and organization of work group activity, assignment of the task, specification of work, and emphasis on goal attainment. In sum, these sets of behaviors are primarily oriented towards task accomplishment (Burke et al., 2006). In contrary, temporal leadership represents the degree to which team leaders schedule deadlines, synchronize team member behaviors, allocate temporal resources, prioritize task-goals, and urge
team members to finish subtasks on time. These behaviors refer to the temporal aspect of the task, which makes temporal leadership a unified and coherent construct (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011).
The theoretical framework behind temporal leadership is drawn from two general theories: McGrath’s (1991) time, interaction and performance theory and the functional leadership approach. McGrath and colleagues define three generic temporal problems within organization’s view of time: temporal ambiguity, conflicting temporal interests and
requirements, and scarcity of resources. In response to these problems, they come up with these three answers: scheduling of activities (in response to temporal ambiguity), synchronizing of activities (in response to temporal conflicting interests and requirements), and allocating temporal resources (in response to the scarcity of resources) (McGrath, 1991).
The theoretical framework of temporal leadership is also rooted in the functional leadership approach, the most common perspective from which researchers study team leader. The main point of the functional approach is that leaders need to ensure that all functions critical to both task accomplishment and group maintenance are adequately taken care off (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006). The general view is that team leaders are responsible for a set of functions, which can generally be broken into task and person focused in nature (Myer, 2010; Zaccaro, Rittman, & Marks, 2002). The temporal nature of team functioning has often been acknowledged but not yet fully delineated as team leadership involves meeting the temporal demands of team based work (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Zaccaro et al., 2002). Even though models of team leadership recognizes the importance of timing functions such as monitoring and management of team performance, coordination of speed and task accomplishment and synchronization of actions, time focused leadership lacks in the literature. Team temporal leadership fills this void in
the team leadership by placing time at the forefront of critical leadership functions (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011; Myer, 2010; Zaccaro et al., 2002).
Strong levels of temporal leadership will moderate the relationship between temporal diversity and team performance. Teams with leaders who aid in structuring, coordinating, and managing the pacing of task accomplishment will benefit from it by responding positively to temporal issues due to the guidance of their temporal leader (Maruping et al., 2015). It is suggested that strong temporal leaders will reduce problems or amplify benefits of diversity for all temporal individual differences because of scheduling, synchronizing, and allocating temporal resources to maximize performance. However, when temporal leadership is lower, the team may experience problems associated with these temporal difference because of the fact that temporal leaders do not manage this diversity effectively, which in turn result in lower levels of team performance. Therefore, it proposed the following hypothesizes:
Hypothesis 2a (2c and 2d): Temporal leadership moderates the negative relationship between
time urgency diversity and team performance such that high levels op temporal leadership, when compared to low levels, reduce or reverse the negative effect of time urgency diversity on team performance. For hypothesis 2c and 2d, it is proposed that temporal leadership will also diminish the negative effects for pacing style and polychronicity.
Hypothesis 2b: Temporal leadership moderates the positive influence of time perspective
diversity on the team performance. Thus, the high levels of temporal leadership, by comparing with low-level leadership, improve the positive effect of time perspective diversity on the team performance.
2.7. The Mediating Effect of Shared Temporal Cognition
In studying the link between temporal diversity and team performance, researchers have not yet explicitly test possible mediators. Therefore, this study would like to propose shared temporal cognition as a mediating mechanism through which temporal leadership has a positive impact on temporal diverse teams. We are not aware of other studies that have examined the mediating role of shared temporal cognition in the temporal diversity-team performance
relationship. Shared temporal cognition, shared cognitions on time, or temporal consensus are all terms that have been used to describe the common views of team members with respect to the temporal aspects of the activities and the appropriate temporal approach to team tasks (J. M. Gevers, Rutte, & van Eerde, 2004; Mohammed et al., 2012). Shared temporal cognition refers to the extent to which group members have congruent mental representations of the temporal aspect of a specific group task, such as the importance of meeting the deadline, (sub) task completion times, and the appropriate timing and pacing task of activities. When group members have common or overlapping views regarding these temporal aspects of task execution, the temporal cognitions are shared (J. M. Gevers et al., 2006).
Furthermore, shared temporal cognitions help group members to anticipate and
understand each other’s actions, and to adopt more compatible work patterns. From this point of view, coordination of task activities will increase, and team performance will benefit from it. Higher levels of shared temporal cognitions indicate that team members concur on the temporal strategy for a project, including agreement on deadline, the work tempo, and the pacing style of work; whereas lower levels of shared temporal cognition, indicated team members having entire different views concerning the temporal aspect of activities (J. M. Gevers, van Eerde, & Rutte, 2009).
Team leaders have a crucial role in ensuring the alignment of team members’ actions, and coordinating them so they can accomplish goals on time. Temporal leaders need to make sure that all members understand when tasks need to be completed, when deadlines are approaching, and when outputs need to be delivered (J. M. Gevers et al., 2006; Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011; Murase, Carter, DeChurch, & Marks, 2014). We have defined temporal leadership as behaviors that aid in structuring, coordinating, and managing the pacing task accomplishments in a team. Strong temporal leaders may reduce problems in temporal individual differences, whereas weaker temporal leaders fail to address temporal issues. We argue that due to the behavior and the interference of a temporal leader, team members are more likely to become aware of their own temporal preferences, and of their team members. Proposed is that temporal leadership can increase the awareness about temporal diversity within a team, which in turn can increase the shared temporal cognitions within the team. For example, it cannot be expected that individuals are aware of their own temporal preferences and that they share their preferences with their team members. Suggested is that temporal leaders contribute to this process by making team members aware of temporal diversity within teams and by creating an environment where team members are motivated to start a conversation about the individual differences in temporality. This sharing of knowledge and information can aid to the congruent mental representations of the temporal aspects of activities.
Team cognition (team-shared knowledge) occurs in teams where members share knowledge about each other, task-specific information, and team processes. These factors have represented as a shared mental model. These models are believed to reflect an individual knowledge structure and can be shared across individuals as in a group or team (O’connor & Johnson, 2006). It has shown that well-developed cognitive structures and alignment about the
team’s work are crucial for coordination of task activities and team performance (Mathieu, Heffner, Goodwin, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 2000). Simultaneously, a number of studies have shown the importance of shared team cognitions for facilitating the coordination of actions among team members and team performance (DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus, 2010; Mathieu et al., 2000). In another article, provident evidence was found for the arguments that team cognition served as a mediator with team performance.
The role of the leader can influence the team cognition. It is examined that temporal leadership working under time pressure, managing several projects at the same time and
coordinating work with team members that are geographically divided brings many challenges to teams and their leaders. Thus, sharing an understanding about the temporal aspects of work could be helpful to team members who plan work and manage their time to meet deadlines. If not, conflicts with respect to time-related aspects may arise that often undermines functioning of the team, and may inhibit the achievement of goals. Therefore, it is important that team members have a shared temporal cognition, and team leaders need to show temporal leadership in order to promote it and thus increase the performance through expanding the awareness of temporal diversity within teams and minimizing the temporal conflicts (Santos, Passos, Uitdewilligen, & Nübold, 2016b).
Hypothesis 3a: Shared temporal cognition mediates the moderating effect of temporal
leadership on the relationship between time urgency diversity and team performance. For hypothesis 3b, 3c and 3d, it is proposed that shared temporal cognition mediates the moderating effect of temporal leadership for the other independent variables, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity.
3. Method 3.1 Research Design: Organizational Context
This study involves self-managed teams in the industry of IT and health care. The concept of self-managed teams, self-organized or self-directed (the terms are often used
interchangeably) work teams have been used from several decades to enhance the effectiveness of the working organizations (Parker, Holesgrove, & Pathak, 2015). Moreover, team members are highly responsible for generating good outcomes in improving the level of performance in the organization (Millikin et al., 2010). For conducting the research, the author has done an internship in the IT sector. Within the IT industry, the software development environment has a significant influence on the performance of the employees. There is the big trend of
self-managed teams in the modern organizations in which some teams utilize the special method, called the SCRUM method. It is a software development process for small teams. A scrum, in rugby, consists of eight individuals in the pack that acts together with everyone else to move the ball down the field. Teams work as tight, integrated units and everyone in the team is showing his/her efforts to achieve the single goal. In development teams, roles are assigned to team members and each member needs to understand his or her role. The team, in general, should have a single focus that they need to give high priority for attaining the best results.
Correspondingly, the Scrum is a software development process for small teams, with an initial planning phase, followed by short development phases (or sprints), and usually, the closure phase completes the product development. Three main roles are assigned to the project team members, the product owner, the scrum master and the team members. The scrum master leads the scrum meetings and empirically measures the progress toward the goal of delivering the product, which makes him the facilitator of the team process (Rising & Janoff, 2000).
Two surveys were created for acquiring data. One questionnaire was designed for the team leader and another one was created for the team members. For this research, the scrum master was labelled as “team leader” and project team members filled in the other questionnaire. Each team leader had to fill in a questionnaire concerning individual differences (time urgency, time perspective, polychronicity, and pacing style), the performance of the team and the
demographic data (gender, age,). Other than that, team members also had to provide information concerning their individual characteristics (time urgency, time perspective, polychronicity and pacing style), temporal leadership, shared temporal cognition and demographic data (gender, age, tenure etc.).
For conducting the research, the author has sent the invitation to more than 600 scrum masters on LinkedIn. Half of them did not respond, and only 10% of the other group joined the team research. After the confirmation emails from the respondents, the team leaders were provided with a detailed email about the overall instruction to participate in the teamwork. In addition to that, the scrum masters were asked to fill in the team leader questionnaire and to hand out the team member questionnaire. The final sample consisted of 30 scrum teams with 30 team leaders and 128 team members. The average team size was 5.2 members (SD = 1.51).
3.2 Measurements
3.2.1. Independent Temporal Variables
In the particular report, time urgency was measured by a scale that captures the degree through which individuals feel chronically hurried or not at all (E.g. “I find myself hurrying to get to places even when there is plenty of time.”). Respondents had to fill in six items that were answered on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from (1) “strongly disagree and (5) “strongly agree”.
The scale has been shown to be consistent and has previously been used by Mohammed & Nadkarni (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011).
Time perspective was assessed with the consideration of future consequence that consists of twelve items, ranging from (1) “strongly disagree” to (5) “strongly agree”. The scale,
developed and validated by Strathman et al. (1994), measures the degree to which individuals consider distant outcomes versus immediate benefits in choosing behaviour (E.g. “I consider how things might be in the future, and try to influence those things with my day to day
behavior”) (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011; Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger & Edwards, 1994). Pacing style was measured by using the scale of Gevers et al (2015) that contains nine items which capture the degree by which individuals distribute their workload from the moment they get the project or task until the deadline (E.g. “I do most of the work on tasks in a relatively short time before the deadline.”). Respondents had to fill in a nine item (1 = strongly disagree, 5 strongly agree) questionnaire (J. Gevers et al., 2015).
Polychronicity, developed by Poposki et al. (2009), was measured by a fourteen item scale that captures the degree to which individuals prefer to work on one project versus multiple projects at the same time (E.g. “I prefer to work on several projects in a day, rather than
completing one project and then switching to another”). The answers of the scale ranged from (1) “strongly disagree” to (5) “strongly agree” (Poposki, Oswald, & Brou, 2009).
Diversity has been shown to be confusing, difficult to understand and difficult to synthesize in the organizational literature because the diversity literature itself is so diverse. Harrison & Klein (2007) argue that synthesis of diversity is difficult because as a term, it is seldom explicitly defined. Moreover, researchers have used a variety of labels including the dispersion, heterogeneity, dissimilarity, disagreement, divergence, variation, and inequality to
refer to diversity. For this study, diversity was calculated in accordance of Harrison and Klein’s (2007) attempt to classify diversity on attributes into three different ways. First, separation is often used in cases of differences in position or opinion among team members, primarily of value, belief, or attitude, disagreement or opposition. Secondly, variety in teams is about the differences in kind, source, category, relevant knowledge or experience among team members unique or distinctive information. At last, differences in the proportion of socially valued assets of resources held among team members, inequality or relative concentration are classified as disparity. In short, separation reflects the position; variety reflects information and disparity reflect the possession. In addition, nature of minimum, moderate and maximum diversity is described effectively in the research study (Harrison & Klein, 2007).
The diversity of time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity describe the distribution of members on a horizontal continuum, based on their position, which is referred to as “separation diversity”. According to these researchers, if team members are either high or low on this continuum, diversity is low because a minimum separation occurs. However, maximum separation occurs when team members are evenly spread out over the continuum and have positions at both ends of the continuum. For calculating the separation diversity, the within group standard deviations is appropriate (Harrison & Klein, 2007). Therefore, diversity of time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity was measured by calculating the standard deviation (Harrison & Klein, 2007).
3.2.2. Moderator: Temporal Leadership
Temporal leadership is effectively explained by Mohammed and Nadkarni (2011) and was measured by a scale that captures the degree by which leaders engage in temporal behaviour that aid in structuring, coordinating and managing the pacing of task accomplishment. For instance, how the leader manages the deadlines and in what ways he/she reminds the member about the deadline. Respondents had to fill in six items of a five point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 strongly agree) questionnaire.
3.2.3. Mediator: Shared Temporal Cognition
Shared temporal cognition was measured by a four item scale, ranging from (1) “strongly agree to (5) “strongly disagree”, this scale identifies the degree of measurement to analyse the individuals common or overlapping views regarding temporal aspects of task execution (E.g. “In my team, we have the same opinions about meeting deadlines?”)(Gevers et al., 2015).
3.2.4. Dependent variables
A measure of team performance was used for evaluating the performance of the team. The author asked the team leader to rate the performance of their team according to the five items scale, which involve the efficiency, quality, overall achievement, productivity, and mission fulfilment. These five points are rated within the range from (1) “far below average” to (7) far above average (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992).
Team innovation was measured by a scale with ratings of the introduction or application within a team of new ideas, processes, products, or procedures. Moreover, it focuses on those activities that are new to the team and are designed to be useful (e.g., “Team members often
implement new ideas to improve the quality of our products and services.”). Team leaders had to fill in a four item questionnaire, based on a seven point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree) questionnaire (Anderson & West, 1998).
3.2.5. Control variables
The author used control variables for influencing the prior team research. It is further suggested that these variables might have had an effect on the relationship between the different variables in the conceptual model (Chen, 2007). The control variables that were added to the questionnaires of the team leaders and team members were gender, age, task complexity, task interdependency, and the means of time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and
polychronicity. Task complexity was measured through a three-item scale where team members needed to rate several questions such as: “this job requires that the individual performs one task or activity at a time” (Morgeson & Humphrey, 2006). Task interdependency measures the
interdependence of the task. An example of one of the five items was: “I need to collaborate with fellow team members about work related issues” (Van Der Vegt et al., 2003).
3.3 Data aggregation
This research model analyses the data at the team level. However, the data of the team members was collected at the individual level. Therefore, data aggregation from the individual level to the team level was conducted. In order to check whether the data aggregation was
justified, the within-team agreement Rwg[J], the intra-class correlations (ICC[1]) and reliabilities of the means (ICC[2]) were calculated. . This was done by using a tool for computing Interrater Agreement and Interrater Reliabiliy estimates for consensus compositions constructs (Biemann,
Cole, & Voelpel, 2012). This tool estimated the ratio of the total variance between teams and the reliability of the individual team member ratings. The Rwg[J] values indicate the degree of agreement among team members, and the intra-class correlation coefficients represent the level of consensus and consistency (ICC[1]) corrected for the average team size, and the reliability of the means of the team members (ICC[2]) (Biemann et al., 2012; James, Demaree, & Wolf, 1984). The justification for time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity was not needed since variables were used for calculating diversity (standard deviation). Since the mean of time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity (used as control variables) follow the additive model (other forms of compositional model: direct consensus, referent-shift consensus, dispersion, and process composition), justification was not needed (Chan, 1998). Shared temporal cognition had values of .90 (rwg[J]), .18 (ICC[1]) and .55
(ICC[2]), task interdependence had values of .76 (rwg[J]), .16 (ICC[1]) and .40 (ICC[2]) and task
complexity had values of .81 (rwg[J]), .24 (ICC[1]) and .73 (ICC[2]). Rwg values were found to be
above the acceptable point of .70 (Biemann et al., 2012), and therefor the aggregation to the team-level was justified. The rwg and the ICC[1] showed sufficient support to aggregate the data,
however the values of ICC[2] are only modest. A possible reason for this could be explained by the small team sizes (n=30) (LeBreton & Senter, 2008; LeBreton, James & Lindell, 2005)
4. Results
The main goal of this research was to analyze the effect of temporal leadership on the relationship between temporal diversity and team performance, as captured by team performance and team innovation. Temporal leadership was hypothesized to enhance the team performance in temporal diverse teams through increased levels of shared temporal cognition. The study used hierarchical regression analyses for testing the hypotheses.
Table 1 shows the standard deviations, means, and correlations for the study variables at the group level. Several significant correlations were found. Pacing style was positively related to team performance (r = .32, p < 0,1). Polychronicity diversity was positively related to
temporal leadership (r = .39, p < 0,5). Other than that, temporal leadership correlated positively with shared temporal cognition (r = .30, p < 0,5) and shared temporal cognition had a positive correlation with team performance (r = .39, p < 0,5). At last, as expected, team performance was positively correlated with team innovation (r = .61, p < 0,01).
Table 1: Means, Standard Deviations, Correlations Variables M S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 1. Age 34,19 6,95 1 2. Gender 0,18 0,19 -.221 1 3. Task Complexity 2,2 0,43 -.461** .122 1 4. Task Interdependence 3,64 0,33 .011 .230 -.221 (0.79)
5. Mean Time Urgency 2,47 0,47 -.535* .295 .117 .229 (.71) 6. Mean Time perspective 2,97 0,22
-.440** .069 .269 -.073 .509* (.70)
7. Mean Pacing style 2,60 0,43 -.530* .210 .360*** -.089 .421** .518* (0.80)
8. Mean Polychronicity 2,83 0,36 .068 .241 .108 -.278 -.125 -.032 .239 (0.88) 9. Time Urgency diversity 0,95 0,39 .049 .063 .080 .206 .175 -.067 -.031 .039 (.71)
10. Time perspective diversity 0,78 0,43 -.265 .059 .236 -.105 .322*** .367** .450** -.021 .047 (.70)
11. Pacing style diversity 0,76 0,36 -.173 .075 .137 .093 .255 .192 -.120 -.157 -.208 .113 (.80) 12. Polychronicity diversity 0,93 0,41 .242 .102 -.241 .205 -.346*** -.274 -.175 .034 -.061 -.214 -.249 (.88) 13. Temporal leadership 3,02 0,61 -.178 -.143 .240 .056 .428** .272 .075 .188 .268 .216 .032 -.385** (.90)
14. Shared temporal cognition 3,80 0,48 .235 -.226 .007 .061 -.099 .222 -.310*** .036 -.092 .111 .151 -.007 .448** (.81)
15. Performance 5,20 0,94 .169 -.147 .090 -.305*** -.083 .340*** -.086 -.111 -.040 .047 .320*** .030 -.149 .390** (.89)
15. Innovation 5,34 1,07 .207 -.160 -.008 .001 -.096 .232 -.060 -.069 .037 -.250 .290 .029 -.130 .254 .606* (.83) N = 30, values at the diagonal represent internal consistencies.
*Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). **Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). ***Correlation is significant at the 0.10 level (2-tailed).
For testing the studied hypotheses, hierarchical linear regression analyses were
conducted. The results can be found in Appendix A, with table 2 for team performance and table 3 for team innovation. All variables, excluding the dependent variables and dummy-coded variables, were first standardized (Aiken, West & Reno, 1991). To test hypothesis 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d, several steps were taken. First, the control variables, age, gender, task complexity, task interdependence and the mean scores of the diversity forms were entered in the regression. Next, diversity variables of time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity were inserted on the table. For time urgency diversity and polychronicity diversity, no significant relation was found. Therefore, Hypothesis 1a and 1d are rejected. Pacing style diversity was positively related with team performance (β = 0.39, p < 0.10) and with team innovation (β = 0.46), p < 0.10). This positive relationship is interesting because of the negative expected
relationship. Time perspective diversity was negatively related to team innovation (β = -0.42, p < 0.10) and had no significant relationship with team performance. It is interesting to find that in the current study, diversity in time perspective was found to be negative, instead of the expected positive relationship. Therefore, hypothesis 1b and 1c are rejected.
The hypothesis 2a, 2c and 2d proposed that the negative relationship between time urgency diversity and team performance, pacing style diversity and team performance; and polychronicity and team performance is moderated by temporal leadership, such that high levels of temporal leadership, when compared to low levels, reduce or reverse the negative relationship of these variables on performance.
Whereas hypothesis 2b proposed that temporal leadership diminishes the positive relationship between time perspective and team performance, such that high levels of temporal
leadership, when compared to low levels, improve the positive relationship of time perspective on team performance. For testing these hypotheses, the author took several extra steps. Firstly, the interaction terms between temporal leadership and each of the temporal diversity variables were calculated. In step 2 of the regression analysis, temporal leadership was added, to check if there is an indirect effect with team performance or not. In step 3, the interaction terms of the temporal variables were added to the regression analysis. For team performance, there was no significant moderation effect present for the temporal variables. Therefore, hypothesis 2a, 2b, 2c and 2d are rejected. However, for team innovation, some moderation effects were found. The moderating effect of temporal leadership on the association between time perspective diversity and team innovation was positive at the confidential level of 95% (β = 1.48, p < 0.05). In contrast, the relationship between polychronicity diversity and temporal leadership on team innovation was found to be negative (β = -1.00, p < 0.05). Shared temporal cognition had a positive relationship on team performance level (β = 0.63, p < 0.01) and on team innovation level (β = 0.49, p < 0.05) In accordance with Dawson (2014), the interactions were plotted (see
Appendix B: figure 1-8).
For testing the mediation, a fourth step was taken in the hierarchical regression. Hence, the mediation model was tested in accordance with the method of Baron and Kenny (1986). They suggested that the relationship between the independent variables and the mediators should be tested. To test hypothesis 3a (and 3b, 3c, and 3d), which states that shared temporal cognition mediates the moderating effect of temporal leadership on the relationship between temporal diversity and team performance, a regression analysis was conducted on the dependent variable, which was shared temporal cognition. The interaction of time urgency diversity and temporal leadership, the interaction of time perspective diversity and temporal leadership, the interaction
of pacing style diversity and temporal leadership; and the interaction effect of polychronicity diversity and temporal leadership were the independent variables. However, there was no significant effect found. Results can be found in Appendix A, table 4.
The final step of the Baron and Kenny (1986) approach is to show that the mediator has a significant effect on the dependent variable. Therefore, a regression analysis was conducted wherein team performance and team innovation were regressed on shared temporal cognition. It was found that shared temporal cognition was positively related to team performance (β = 0.60, < 0.05). For team innovation, there was no significant relationship found. The results are shown in Appendix A,Table 5.
For determining, whether there was a significant mediated moderation effect, Sobel’s test was conducted. There were no significant results found for shared temporal cognition within the relationship of the interaction of time urgency diversity on team performance and team innovation. Similar results were found for the interactions of time perspective, pacing style and polychronicity on team performance and team innovation. Shared temporal cognition did not mediate the relationships.
There were no significant results found for shared temporal cognition on the relationship with team innovation. For assessing the indirect effect a bit further, the process modeling macro of Hayes (2012) was used with bias-corrected confidence intervals based on 1000 bootstrap samples. The approach of Hayes (2012) is useful because it presents PROCESS, a modeling tool for SPSS as well as SAS. PROCESS model has the capability of probing 2-way interactions as well as 3-way interactions. The model can develop bias-corrected confidence intervals in the context of indirect effects related to mediation models. According to Preacher and Hayes (2004), bootstrapping is a nonparametric approach to effect-size estimation and hypothesis testing that
makes no assumptions about the shape of the distribution of the variables and is used for the construction of asymmetric confidence intervals for indirect effects in moderated mediation models (Hayes, 2012). This test is convenient because it is more applicable to small samples (in this case 30 teams). In addition to that, bootstrapping could be used in cases where analysis cannot be provided with solutions (Preacher & Hayes, 2004). For checking the bootstrap intervals, we used an interval of 90%, since this research had low significant results. Furthermore, the interaction effect of time urgency diversity on task performance and team innovation, with shared temporal cognition as the mediator, resulted in no mediation effect. Consequently, the same accounted for time perspective diversity, pacing style diversity and polychronicity diversity. Since no moderated mediation effect was found for neither of the variables, hypothesis 3a, 3b, 3c and 3d are rejected.
5. Discussion
The focus of this study was to contribute to the field of temporal individual differences and temporal leadership within self-managed teams. Secondly, the author has tried to understand how the temporal diversity and team performance link will be influenced by the impact of certain factors. Although, the hypotheses were rejected, some interesting results were found and are discussed in the next section.
5.1 Theoretical implications
5.2.1. Temporal diversity and team performance
The result of this team research contributes in several ways to the temporal diversity and team performance literature. Although, several researchers have tried to identify temporal problems that arise within the teams, many theoreticians and practitioners do not understand the temporal diversity and team performance link effectively. Thereby, understanding these temporal problems, issues and managing them appropriately is a relevant and important topic in today’s world where most of the organizations are running by team-based work structures (Harrison, Mohammed, McGrath, Florey, & Vanderstoep, 2003). Referring back to Kozlowski and bell (2002) that time “remains perhaps the most neglected critical issue in the team research” (p. 364), this research project has made a step towards understanding and uncovering some of the temporal ambiguities within the team research (Kozlowski & Bell, 2003).
The research’s findings suggest the relevance and importance of temporal diversity by having found correlations and significant effects in the hierarchical linear regression analysis. The findings suggest that pacing style diversity and time perspective diversity are linked to performance and may give rise to temporal problems within teams. On the other hand, it was
interesting to find two unexpected relationships. While we argued and proposed that pacing style diversity, due to the context of this study of scrum teams, was negatively related to team
performance, the results had shown an opposite and positive relationship between these two. A suggested reason for this is that the context of the scrum has a high influence on the behavior of the team members. For example, steady action style individuals spread their task activities over time; and early and deadline action style individuals in complete their work long before or just before the deadline. The scrum context working in sprints with strong deadlines may not allow for pacing style behaviors because of the fact that members agree on and share a perception on temporal milestones. Further research is needed to increase the understanding about the nature of pacing style diversity since these issues have mostly been remained unaddressed (J. M. Gevers et al., 2006).
Time perspective diversity, however, had an unexpected negative relationship with team performance. This implies that a scrum environment needs more present-oriented members than future-oriented members, as future oriented members are likely to create a vision and engage in long-term planning, which might not be needed when working in sprints. However, more research is needed to better understand the association between the time perspective diversity and team performance in another context.
5.2.2. Team temporal leadership
It is identified that team temporal leadership moderated the relationship between time perspective and team innovation. The result implies that there is a big importance of temporal leaders who have a significant effect on the team performance. Additionally, temporal leadership had a negative effect on the relationship between polychronicity and team performance. These
findings contribute to the temporal leadership theory and affirm the influence that temporal leaders have on their team. Moreover, the other findings included that temporal leadership had a negative moderation effect on the association between polychronicity diversity and team
innovation. This raises an interesting question about the influence temporal leaders have on their team member’s preference for working in specific ways, either monochronic or more
polychronic. This result suggests that leading members to work in a specific way, could affect their creativity and influences the team innovation (De Dreu & West, 2001). Correspondingly, it is further helpful for the author to interpret results with the identification of the negative side of the temporal leaders. Future studies should examine temporal leadership in more creative
contexts to find out how temporal leadership influences not only team performances but also the team innovation.
5.2.3. Shared Temporal Cognition
Although all our hypotheses were rejected, we have found that shared temporal cognition had a positive and significant relationship with team performance and team innovation. This result suggests the importance of shared temporal cognitions within teams and it suggests that if members share knowledge about the temporal aspects of the task, it could lead to higher
performance. The shared temporal cognition can help group members to anticipate and
understand each other’s actions. If team members do this by their own, or by the interference of a leader, the case remains the same. Thus, shared temporal cognitions are important for team performance.
5.2 Managerial implications
Despite the fact that no evidence was found in the research for the hypothesis, some managerial implications can be described based on the results and other findings in the literature. This study informs managers about temporal diversity and temporal leadership within the
organizational context and it is time for managers to effectively manage temporal diverse teams in this time-pressured world. Firstly, as mentioned previously, temporal individual differences between team members are likely to operate “beneath” awareness (Mohammed & Nadkarni, 2011). Therefore, it is essential to make managers and team members aware about the time differences that exist within teams and inform them about temporal attributes, which often have remained in the background. This is important and relevant for companies.
The next step involves bringing time and temporal leadership to the forefront and urges leaders within teams to create schedules, manage asynchronies, set deadlines, and allocate temporal resources, coordinating, and managing the pacing of task accomplishments. Companies could train leaders to show these temporal behaviors. Another advice for companies is to create a small toolkit or team model about the four individual temporal differences. Based on the
questions to measure the scale of time urgency, time perspective, pacing style and
polychronicity, organizations can choose the most relevant questions to create the questionnaire for temporal leaders and team members. The team members have to fill in this questionnaire to see what their temporal attributes are and to start the discussion about the attributes of their team members. The temporal leaders can help the team members with interpreting the results and the meanings of the four temporal individual differences. This temporal team model toolkit makes the theory practical and is a good way to measure and quantify the temporal diversity within teams. Therefore, it could be a great way to start the conversation and to increase the shared
temporal cognitions.
5.3 Limitations and future research
This research has several limitations that also need to be addressed and considered.
Thus, the first limitation is its small sample size (n = 30). Despite having reached out to six hundred leaders and putting in extensive effort to increase the response rate, the statistical power of this study is weak. The small sample size might have led to insignificant results
although the effect might have been present. Therefore, the author decreased the confidence level from 95% to 90%, which did not lead to different results. Future studies should replicate this study with larger samples. On the other hand, the difficultly of gathering data and getting organizational support make research incredibly challenging.
Another limitation is the cross-sectional nature of this study, which measures and
observes only one specific moment in time due to the use of the snapshot. Other results might be found if another period has been chosen. In general, a cross-sectional examination of mediation will generate biased estimates even under the ideal situation (Maxwell & Cole, 2007). Therefore, it would be interesting if researchers would perform a longitudinal study.
Additionally, the research was limited in measuring the subject of performance. Team leaders needed to measure their own performance. This type of self-report bias leads to artificial covariance by the fact that the respondent, in this case, the leader, providing the measure of the performance variable is the same (Podsakoff et al., 2003). In addition to that, the use of an objective measurement would likely result in higher reliability and validity rate. It remains difficult to measure performance objectively within team research.
of the construct of the scrum method. Scrum uses strong planning tools and deadlines, which may result in temporal behaviors. The sprint goals themselves are an effective tool for keeping people on track of schedules (Rising & Janoff, 2000). The structuring of the schedules may have influenced temporal leadership or may leave no room for certain temporal individual differences.
