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In many companies, product managers are under increasing time pressure. They are generalists in a marketing world that is increasingly specialized and complex. There are more tasks to perform, more specialist skills to acquire, more fires to fight, and less time for thinking and strategic planning. If their general management skills are to be used effectively, product managers must be able to focus their time on the tasks that exploit these skills and help their businesses to grow. The product management audit surveys product managers on how they actually spend their time and how they would ideally spend it to really build their businesses. Data from the audit can help to establish time allocation priorities for product managers and uncover potential time allocation problems before they become critical. We will first review the changes in the marketing environment that are putting pressure on the product management system. Second, we will show how any consumer, industrial, or service company can conduct a product management audit to find out how product management personnel are spending their time and why, and how satisfied they are with their jobs, the support provided, and rewards they are receiving. Third, we will illustrate the type of data that the audit can generate and present key findings from responses to audit surveys by over 300 product management personnel from 20 strategic business units in six Fortune 500 consumer goods companies. Finally, we will explain how one multidivision packaged goods company used an audit to identify problems within its product management organization and determine the actions needed to correct them.

Time demands faced by school principals make principals’ work increasingly difficult. Research outside education suggests that effective time management skills may help principals meet job demands, reduce job stress, and improve their performance. The purpose of this paper is to investigate these hypotheses.

The authors administered a time management inventory to nearly 300 principals in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the fourth-largest school district in the USA. The authors analyzed scores on the inventory descriptively and used them to predict time-use data collected via in-person observations, a survey-based measure of job stress, and measures of perceived job effectiveness obtained from assistant principals and teachers in the school.

Principals with better time management skills allocate more time in classrooms and to managing instruction in their schools but spend less time on interpersonal relationship-building. Perhaps as a result of this tradeoff, the authors find that associations between principal time management skills and subjective assessments of principal performance are mixed. The authors find strong evidence, however, that time management skills are associated with lower principal job stress.

Findings suggest that building principals’ time management capacities may be a worthwhile strategy for increasing time on high-priority tasks and reducing stress.

This study is the first to empirically examine time management among school principals and link time management to key principal outcomes using large-scale data.

The problems of One‐Man‐Bands (OMBs) began to be taken seriously in the early 1980s when the Aslib OMB group was formed. The group received considerable attention in the professional press, and became the object of a study by Judith Collins and Janet Shuter who identified them as “information professionals working in isolation”. Many of the problems identified in the Collins/Shuter study remain — not least of these being the further education and training needs of OMBs. These needs are studied in this report. The author has firstly done an extensive survey of the literature to find what has been written about this branch of the profession. Then by means of a questionnaire sent to the Aslib OMB group and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (INVOG), training and education needs have been pinpointed. Some of these needs have then been explored in greater detail by means of case studies. The author found that the most common deterrents to continuing education and training were time, cost, location, finding suitable courses to cover the large variety of skills needed and lastly, lack of encouragement from employers. The author has concluded by recommending areas where further research is needed, and suggesting some solutions to the problems discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrative model of time management, and in particular develop a scale to measure organizational variables which would facilitate and support time management practices. The research also examined whether the time management environment is related to turnover intentions and stress.

Three studies are reported. Study 1 sampled 262 employees from 20 organizations and these data were used for the initial factor analysis of the time management environment (TiME) scale. Study 2 sampled 205 employees from an aircraft maintenance organization, and these data were used to further refine the factor structure of the TiME scale, to conduct a CFA, examine the relationship between the TiME scale factors and turnover intentions, and to examine the test‐retest reliability of the TiME scale. Study 3 sampled 156 employees across eight organizations, and these data were used to examine the relationship between the TiME scale factors and stress.

The TiME scale has five factors, and each has acceptable internal consistency and test‐retest reliability. TiME scale factor scores were negatively correlated with both turnover intentions and stress.

The research did not examine the convergent and discriminant validity of the TiME scale.

The TiME scale provides for the assessment of whether an organization's environment is facilitating and supporting its employees' attempts to engage in time management, and can also be used as a measure of transfer climate for time management training interventions.

The TiME scale addresses a gap in the time management literature. It has considerable applied value, and along with our integrative model should allow for the development of a more complex understanding of the time management process.

As a way to enable employees to work distantly, teleworking has gained a growing interest in companies. At the same time, management challenges regarding the teleworkers’ risk of isolation, coupled with the need to maintain cohesion for the dispersed team, to give an example, are various. How can management practices help to maintain adequate levels of perceived proximity for a dispersed team’s members? The purpose of this paper is to answer this question. Referring to a particular person’s perception of how close or how far another person is, the concept of perceived proximity is mobilized. This Telecom case study is based on 22 interviews with human resources directors, managers and teleworkers. While the results of this study appear to corroborate empirically the theoretical model as proposed by O’Leary et al. (2014), they also propose nuances, highlighting the importance of the interpersonal relationship to expand the perceived proximity and stressing the need for both distant and face-to-face exchanges. They also help to understand which management practices can influence perceived proximity. In particular, they help to understand the role of communication and collective identity and support the importance of the e-leader. Finally, the results highlight two remote management modes that will be discussed elaborately.

The authors conducted a single in-depth case study of Telecom as a unique case study; it is useful to analyze new and complex phenomena for which theoretical development is emerging and the consideration of the context is essential (Yin, 2013). In total, 22 interviews were conducted with the human resources directors, managers and teleworkers. Lasting between 40 and 130 min each, the interviews were all fully transcribed and analyzed using an iterative thematic content analysis. The authors first manually analyzed the data on the basis of the social regulation theory to interpret the local and the combined regulation (that is say to how the managers and the teleworkers co-build the rules to work being distant) the telework implied between managers, teleworkers and their co-workers (Authors, 2018). Two emerging codes led the authors to reinterpret the data, compared to the initial interpretative framework. The authors thus transformed the coding and recoded the 22 interviews (Bacharach et al., 2000, p. 713; cited by Gibbert et al. 2010, p. 58) around the objective/subjective working time and information and communication technology (ICT) use and the perceived proximity: shared identity and perceived proximity, and communication and perceived proximity.

First, the level of ICT use and the accompanying objective and subjective perceptions with regard to working time are reported and positive perceptions for the employees are determined because of the timing flexibility the ICT determines. Second, the ICT use is presented in relation to the managerial and collegial proximity perceived. Third, the authors discuss the shared identity processes that influence the proximity perceived, followed by the characteristics of the communication process, being the fourth one. As such, the results lead to a valuable input that enables to critically reflect on the e-leader roles, resulting in two emerging management modes seen as a continuum in terms of shared identity: the “e-communicational” mode signals the re-foundation of management in situations of distance based on the personality of the e-leader that influences the team members in terms of communicational and organizational behaviors; and the control management mode that is based upon objectives in a situation of being distant, illustrated by managers who regulate the work made by the distant team in monitoring the objectives without sharing the experience of telework.

The results corroborate empirically with the theoretical model by Boyer O’Leary et al. (2014), while putting into perspective the complexity to manage the inter-subjectivity that is related to distance. More specifically, the results show that even if the ICT use leads to a new balance regarding time management for teleworkers – increasing their quality of life perceptions, with a better organizational flexibility – that is to say, a “win-win” configuration, the ultimate success of such a configuration depends on sound management practices. In this sense, the authors propose to enrich their model (Figure 3, p. 33). More extensive research will test two new moderating variables. At first, the results put in evidence the core role of e-management (e-communicational vs control), with a potential moderator effect on the relationship between objective distance and shared identification, on the one hand, and communication, on the other hand. Another result is the potential moderator effect of the ICT use on the relationship between perceived proximity and relationship quality. The nuances proposed support some recent studies arguing that distant communication (versus face-to-face) may inhibit geographically distributed team performance without consideration of the way the teams use ICT to ensure their cohesion and performance (Malhotra and Majchrzak, 2014).

These conclusions result into important management recommendations to support dispersed teams with how to cope with challenges such as the risk of delayed communication, possible misinterpretations, limited information richness and great conflicts (Zuofa and Ochieng, 2017).

Compared to the unique empirical application of the Boyer O’Leary et al.’s framework (2014), who found no differences existing in terms of proximity perceived with the study of 341 “geographically present” dyads with 341 “geographically distant,” this study’s results show that the construction of the feeling of proximity depends on a fragile balance between virtual and face-to-face exchanges. The authors also highlight the role of an e-leader in this regard and identify and compare two modes of remote management.

The key to any successful organization must be its communication network. Bold statement, but is it true? It is, of course, a sweeping generalization and one with which anyone would have difficulty in picking an argument. One way to determine what is, and what is not, vital to your organization is by eliminating it from the equation and asking yourself where you would be without it. Do away with your communication system, apart from the most basic, and see what you are left with? If the answer is not a great deal, then you can, it is hoped, appreciate the importance of what you have, and realize the attention it deserves. Taking things for granted is an all too common phenomenon.

The purpose of this research is to investigate individual perceptions of time and time management strategies that professionals utilize to achieve their productivity in the execution of their daily tasks, projects and routines. Projects have specific time durations from the beginning to the end, which often need to be broken down into smaller temporal elements (e.g. milestones), and require learning and knowledge capture throughout different project phases. It aims to observe how knowledge management processes tie to personal time management, and how this observation could contribute to project management practices in organizations. The understanding of individual time management strategies, especially when they are connected to the capture, storage, transfer and application of knowledge, can create operational efficiencies in projects.

Two sets of in‐depth semi‐structured interviews and field observations were designed and conducted with 20 busy professionals at an academic institution in the USA. All interviews were audio‐taped and transcribed generating over 350 pages of individual time management strategy statements. An extensive content analysis was performed to categorize the types of knowledge being used by professionals when engaged in daily organizational tasks and projects based on their roles and job hierarchy. Alavi and Leidner's knowledge taxonomies were used as the main coding scheme in order to classify types of individual temporal behaviours uncovered in this study.

This study shows that both explicit and tacit practices of individual time management are an important component of how professionals complete project tasks within their daily routines. Project managers play an important role in leading a successful project, and their time orientations directly affect all project phases.

Although good time management strategies may be one of the key determinants of organizational productivity (driving increased output per unit of time), limited knowledge management research has been conducted within the context of professionals' time management practices. The findings reveal that individual time management is shaped by organizational temporal structures and norms, which organizations use to govern their employees and resources around clock time.

Reports on a survey of how product managers, experiencing increased time pressure, would like to spend their time compared with how they actually spend it. Reviews the changes in the marketing environment currently exerting pressure on the product management system. Explains the implementation of a product management audit. Presents findings from actual audit surveys and shows how one company used an audit to identify and solve problems within its product management organization. Concludes that the product management audit is an excellent tool for producing hard data which may be missed by management by walking around.

The aim of this paper is to conceptualize time as an important dimension of institutions and, more specifically, to develop the analysis of institutions, time, and temporal misfits. The paper explores these matters in the context of an inter‐institutional project where actors, who represent different organizational fields and respond to different institutional requirements with regards to time and timing, need to collaborate.

The paper centers on three critical incidents taken from a study of a large‐scale telecom project in Norway. The paper is based on an analysis of public documents and 35 interviews with key stakeholders and managers in the focal project.

This research shows that temporal misfits are a critical, yet understudied, element of project organizing. The paper suggests and discusses three primary measures – detecting, correcting, and escaping – that project management makes use of to resolve temporal misfits among the actors involved. To advance the analysis of problems facing projects in institutionally‐bounded settings, the paper proposes a typology of temporal misfits (phase and tempo) and different types of complexity (analyzable and systemic).

Although purposeful in many instances, especially in collaborations across institutional boundaries, timing norms may cause profound organizational problems due to temporal misfits among the actors involved. The paper argues that project managers need to identify and be prepared for such organizational problem by being equipped with a repertoire of resolution strategies to handle them. New concepts and approaches are needed to identify and deal with temporal misfits among important stakeholders in projects.

A number of previous studies on project organizing have emphasized the critical aspects of studying institutions and time; but to date, no comprehensive efforts have been made to combine these ideas in empirical investigations. This study emphasizes the criticality of timing norms and temporal misfits to enhance our understanding of the linkages between projects, institutions, and time.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.