Time perception in leadership

A case study of Chinese business culture

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Communications - Intercultural Communication, grade: 1,0, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) (Intercultural Management), course: Leadership. An alternate take, language: English, abstract: Day by day we are woken up by the alarm. The clock schedules our daily routine. Punctuality at work is emphasized. Deadlines are considered to be accomplished on time. The clock drives us to undertake a certain amount of tasks during the day. In Western societies time is considered as resource, which can be spent, saved or lost. Thus, it represents a force, which drives our lives. Timetables and calendars create the feeling of time pressure. This phenomenon implies a big gap between the time an individual lives and the one the same person feels inside like a body clock. Hence, especially in task-oriented management, issues concerning time occur. Furthermore, cultural differences cause a variation of time perceptions. In fact, social time, as a culturally determined interpretation of time, has a great impact on business culture. On the one hand, the sense of social time influences expatriate managers going overseas, who have to adapt the local time perception; on the other hand, it concerns leaders, who have to juggle with two time perceptions in order to organize cross-border collaborations. Punctuality serves as prime example for time perception. While in Western Europe timekeeping represents a virtue, in Southern Europe dates are treated rather flexible. The time perception of cultural groups varies even more. Monochronicity and polychronicity embody the main perspectives of time. Therefore, their origin and impact will be explained in general as well as in terms of managerial behaviour. After classifying the cultural clusters established by the GLOBE study, the example of the Confucian Asia will be contrasted with Western Europe. Further on, the case study of China serves as prime example of Confucian Asia to underline the influence of the local time perception on the present leadership style. Finally, a behavioural guideline for leaders concerning time perception shall create a harmonious overall picture of this work. Since this paper does not have the extent to scrutinize the influence of all cultural dimensions on leadership style, I chose the issue of time perception, because so far this aspect has been rather neglected in research. The following investigations are supposed to give a guideline to time awareness in general. By analysing the case of China, difficulties and potentials of varying time perceptions regarding managerial success shall be examined.