Time and information technology: monochronicity, polychronicity and temporal symmetry
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Time and information technology: monochronicity, polychronicity and temporal symmetry H Lee Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, UK This paper investigates how information technology affects temporal aspects of organizational work beyond speeding up business processes. It has developed the dimensions of temporality of business processes and applied them to describe and analyse temporal changes of export-related work in trading companies using EDI. In the departments studied, information technology transformed temporal profiles of work and also created a temporal symmetry between work groups interacting with each other. This result is compared with a previous study (Barley, 1988. In Making Time, Temple University Press). This temporal transformation of work by information technology has rarely been explored in information systems research as well as organizational studies. At this stage of research, it is difficult to decide which temporality, monochronicity or polychronicity, information technology facilitates, or whether information technology will always create temporal symmetry. More research on the relationship between time and information technology is required. Whatever temporal consequences of information technology are supported by future research, it is believed that this temporal consideration has value in information systems development and implementation. By taking into account polychronicity, monochronicity and temporal symmetry, we will be able to develop information systems which better fit users’ temporal behaviour.
Introduction It is generally accepted that information technology, when implemented successfully, speeds up business processes at an enormous rate and saves the adopting organizations a huge amount of time. In spite of its significance in temporality, research on temporal impacts of information technology is limited in scope and superficial in depth in both management/organizational studies and in information systems research. There are some studies on cycle time reduction in relation to just-in-time (Sakakibara et al, 1997), time-based competition (Stalk, 1988; Stalk & Hout, 1990), fast-cycle (Bower & Hout, 1988) and time compression (Gregory & Rawling, 1997). In business process reengineering, Davenport (1993; Davenport & Short, 1990) also emphasised the sequential capability of information technology in that ‘IT can enable changes in the sequence of tasks in a process, often allowing multiple tasks to be worked on simultaneously’ (1990, p 17). However, they take it for granted that these temporal effects of speeding-up, saving time and reducing cycle time come from information technology, and tend to suppose that they do not require any enquiry. In brief, efforts to explain temporal changes in relation to information technology lack in the current research. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how information techn
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