Managing in polychronic times

As competitive pressures mount, firms are attempting to do more with less – and far more quickly. They are downsizing, using teams, and pushing the time to market. These trends promote polychronic behavior in that they require additional variety in the tasks, activities, and roles that individuals must handle simultaneously. Although evidence suggests that creativity and polychronic preferences are positively related, demands for polychronic behavior appear to be defeating – and resisted – in creative venues such as R&D. This paper addresses this apparent disjunction by focusing on the definition of polychronicity, emphasizing the critical role of agency and the need to count as activities the not particularly visible workings of the mind. The paper proposes, in part, that among creative workers, individual creativity is more related to polychronicity than to monochronicity. Further, volition will play a moderating role in that the relationship between creative performance and either chronicity will be stronger the higher personal agency is in choosing tasks and schedules.