Essay On Time Orientation

I Introduction

Different cultures have a different attitude towards time. There are different concepts of time available. This paper tries to answer the question, if it is necessary to know about the time orientation of a society for building business relationships and how much it influences people’s behaviour.

II Concepts of time

A. Edward T. Hall

Edward T. Hall was an american anthropologist who´s research interests focused on intercultural relations and nonverbal communication. His approach towards time measurement (Hall 1959) was to split cultures into monochronic and polychronic time orientation. This theory implies that time can be used in terms of “one thing at a time” (Dahl 2004) or to deal with multiple tasks at once. The following table shows the differences in these two concepts.

Table 1.: Monochronic vs. Polychronic culture (Dahl 2004)

B. Geert Hofstede

In his major work (Hofstede 1991) Gert Hofstede introduces 5 dimensions of culture, one of them dealing with time measurement. He uses the concept of time orientation in terms of long term vs. short term. In long term oriented cultures future rewards play a major role and with this status in relationships, persistence, thrift, having a sense of shame. On the opposite in short term oriented cultures past and present are important, therefore values like tradition, keeping face, stability and steadiness are favoured.

C. Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodtbeck

Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodtbeck, two cultural anthropologists, stated (Kluckhohn, Strodtbeck 1961) that “There are basic human problems for which all peoples at all times and in all places must find some solution”. According to this they identified 5 basic questions which lead them to their so cal...

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...though it becomes more important to be on time for a business meeting, schedules are only for orientation. Being late is not seen as an offence, meetings take the time they take, no matter what the schedule was.

V Conclusions

Although there was not enough statistic material on this topic for the specific countries I have chosen, especially for Gambia and Kazakhstan, it is still quite obvious that from a European perspective it does matter a lot what time orientation the culture of the country done business with features. To be informed about this topic beforehand surely helps to prevent frustrating business experiences and leads to a better understanding of the business partner as the time orientation heavenly influences people’s behaviour. For a business context it is especially relevant how deadlines, timeframes, meeting schedules, ... are seen and handled.