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Research on polychronicity generally treats time use preference, context, and time tangibility as isomorphic variables that can be represented on a single continuum. An alternative model of temporality that treats these variables as independent dimensions is presented. This model is tested in a sample of 258 middle and senior level executives representing more than 200 organizations and 25 countries. Correlations among the variables and confirmatory factor analyses provide support for the multidimensional view of polychronicity. Further classification provided evidence that all eight possible configurations of the three variables can and do exist. The most frequent “type” reflected a polyphasic time use preference, low context, and high time tangible profile. This profile fits the description of Type A behavior pattern adding support for the multidimensional view.

Past research recognizes the important influence of individual beliefs on technology acceptance and use. This line of research has also identified a variety of factors that drive the formation of these beliefs. One category of variables that has received less attention in this research stream consists of individual preferences, in particular time‐use preferences. In the current study we address the gap in the technology acceptance literature by introducing and empirically testing a new construct labeled computer polychronicity, which captures individuals’ time‐use preferences regarding information technology. A new measure of computer polychronicity is developed and subsequently tested using partial least squares estimation. Computer polychronicity is then theorized as a key driver of perceived usefulness, linking computer anxiety and computer playfulness to perceived usefulness. Overall, the results of model testing support the notion that preferences play an important role in the formation of technology‐related beliefs.

Consumer researchers have long known that some shoppers prefer to combine errands on their shopping trips, while others tend to focus on one errand at a time. However, there was no published evidence that similar behaviors occur within a specific shopping situation. Proposes that polychronic tendency analysis (PTA) can provide insights that explain such behaviors. Self‐reports were used to examine adult women's general polychronic tendency and to contrast this with reported polychronic tendencies when shopping for groceries and shopping for clothing to be worn at work. Three strong‐fitting, theoretically sound constructs consisting of multiple simultaneous activity and activity‐changing items were constructed using a structural equation modeling approach. The general, grocery shopping, and clothing shopping models differed from one another. This showed that women have different time use tendencies in different shopping situations. Also demonstrates how situation‐specific survey instruments and the resultant models and measurement scales can be developed using the PTA approach. Offers retail implications.

This paper provided construct validity evidence for polychronicity in two related studies. Study 1 assessed the relationship between individuals’ stated polychronicity preferences and peer ratings of polychronicity in a multitrait‐multimethod design, which indicated that different raters were able to agree about an individual’s polychronicity. Additional construct validity evidence was provided by linking polychronicity to several potentially related constructs such as achievement striving, impatience/irritability, stress, and performance. In study 2, hypothesized relationships between polychronicity and both time urgency and time management behavior dimensions were supported. In addition, similar relationships between polychronicity and time urgency dimensions were identified across French and US samples. Together, these two studies provide a clearer understanding of the correlates and potential outcomes of polychronicity. Directions for future research are also discussed.

Using the American and the French time-use surveys, we examine whether people have a preference for a more diversified mix of activities, in the sense that they experience greater well-being when their time schedule contains many different activities rather than is concentrated on a very small number. This could be due to decreasing marginal utility, as is assumed for goods consumption, if each episode of time is conceived as yielding a certain level of utility per se. With returns to specialization, people would then face a trade-off between efficiency and diversity in choosing how to allocate time. We examine these issues and investigate potential gender differences, considering both instantaneous feelings and life satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore managers' boundary setting in order to better understand their handling of time commitment to work activities, stress, and recovery during everyday work and at home.

The paper has qualitatively‐driven, mixed method design including observational data, individual interviews, and focus group discussions. Data were analyzed according to Charmaz' view on constructivist grounded theory.

A first step in boundary setting was to recognize areas with conflicting expectations and inexhaustible needs. Second, strategies were formed through negotiating the handling of managerial time commitment, resulting in boundary‐setting, but also boundary‐dissolving, approaches. The continuous process of individual recognition and negotiation could work as a form of proactive coping, provided that it was acknowledged and questioned.

These findings suggest that recognition of perceived boundary challenges can affect stress and coping. It would therefore be interesting to more accurately assess stress, coping, and health status among managers by means of other methodologies (e.g. physiological assessments).

In regulating managers' work assignments, work‐related stress and recovery, it seems important to: acknowledge boundary work as an ever‐present dilemma requiring continuous negotiation; and encourage individuals and organizations to recognize conflicting perspectives inherent in the leadership assignment, in order to decrease harmful negotiations between them. Such awareness would benefit more sustainable management of healthcare practice.

This paper highlights how managers can handle ever‐present boundary dilemmas in the healthcare sector by regulating their time commitments in various ways.

At the core of the success of any firm is its ability to satisfy customer preferences. It has also been part of managerial wisdom that it is good management practice to treat a market as that comprising several market segments and to serve each segment with a different marketing mix. It thus goes without saying that market segments are believed to be very important to profitability. The purpose of this paper is to contend that preference-based segments form and evolve through social interactions between customers. This argument puts forth the questions: How do they form? How do they evolve?

The authors used controlled computer simulations to study the patterns of segments that emerge in markets as consumers in them engage in social interactions.

The simulation results show that market segments emerge across a wide set of assumptions. Further, the paper offers a number of conjectures and propositions for both research and managerial applications, based on the patterns of the emergent segments that were observed.

A research program could/should be developed based on the empirical measurement of preferences, longitudinally, over the life cycle of a product for a fixed sample group, and on the collection of factors about social interaction (ν), social intervention (β) and the propensity to differentiate (α). The results of this study also indicate that further computational work may be able to find the points of criticality where patterns of behavior will change. With the availability of internet data, close empirical examination and operationalization, and refinement of the authors' initial attempts has become possible. For example, data sets that may be applicable are Zafarani and Liu (2009), Leskovec (2012), Newman (2011), and Arenas (2012).

The findings of the study have implications for product line management, conditions under which a first-mover advantage may prevail, and the critical measurements needed to understand segment evolution.

To the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first to study the patterns of emergence of segments over several scenarios.

This commentary focuses on the measurement of temporal dimensions at different levels of analysis. In particular, it examines the measures that are available for various levels of analysis for four temporal dimensions: polychronicity, speed, punctuality, and temporal depth. The discussion is meant to spur additional research using reliable and valid temporal measures at multiple levels of analysis.

This paper aims to identify which types of creative R&D employees prefer which daily and weekly working schedules.

This paper builds on an original repeated survey of creative R&D employees from Estonia and presents multinomial logit regression estimates based on a sample of 153 individuals from 11 entities.

The probability of women preferring their weekly work to be concentrated in three to four days is 20 percentage points higher than in men, and the case is similar for less-educated creative R&D employees. The more educated prefer the standard five-day working week. Men have a stronger preference for their week of work to be dispersed over six to seven days. Sleep patterns appear to relate to working time preferences as morning-type individuals have a stronger preference for a working day with fixed start and end times. Those who sleep 7 h or more per day prefer the standard five-day working week more, while employees who sleep less than 7 h favour a working week of six to seven days. Employees who desire more creativity intensity at work have a stronger preference for irregular daily working hours, as do those with poorer general health.

The results indicate that individual characteristics have a significant impact on the preferences for working time arrangements. Similar working time regulations for all employees appear outdated, therefore, and may make work inefficient and harm individual well-being, at least for creative R&D employees.

The purpose of this paper is to uncover the underlying motives for individuals’ polychronicity, the preference to multitask with media.

For this exploratory study, a qualitative research design is chosen, using face-to-face in-depth interviews and triad groups. In total, 34 in-depth interviews are conducted in the UK, Germany and Australia, with four subsequent triads in the UK.

The underlying motives for individuals’ preference for multiple media use include eight dimensions: comfort with multitasking; multi-channel preference; effectiveness and efficiency; convenience; emotional gratification; information and knowledge; social benefits and assimilation.

A non-probability sample of a specific sample group (Digital Natives) is used in this study and despite the reassurance provided by quality criteria and triangulation, generalisation from this study is problematic. Future research to validate the eight exposed dimensions would be valuable.

For marketing communications and media channel planners, endeavouring to optimise clients’ budgets, the unique knowledge provided by the depth of understanding offered by the eight dimensions of polychronicity and their associated facets enables the development of relevant communication campaigns.

This paper presents a unique insight into individuals’ preference for multiple media use, uncovering the underlying dimensions of this behavioural phenomenon. Accordingly, this study makes a valuable contribution to knowledge in this emerging research domain.