Communication-related organizational structures and work group temporal experiences: the effects of coordination method, technology type, and feedback cycle on members' construals and enactments of time

This study explores how differences in three communication-related structures central to organizational work--coordination methods, workplace technologies, and feedback cycles--influence organizational members' experience of eleven dimensions of time--flexibility, linearity, pace, punctuality, delay, scheduling, separation, scarcity, urgency, and present and future time perspectives. Analyses of data from five residential services departments in a West Coast University revealed that differences in coordination method, technology type, and feedback cycle characteristics helped to shape members' experience of ten dimensions of time--flexibility, linearity, pace, punctuality, delay, separation, urgency, scarcity, and future and present time perspectives. As hypothesized, members of work groups whose feedback cycles included an extended task completion interval and high task variability exhibited a greater future-time perspective than group members whose feedback cycles were characterized by brief intervals and low task variability.