Monochronic/Polychronic Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Monochronic and polychronic are terms coined by American anthropologist Edward T. Hall to describe how cultures and societies differ in their perceptions of time.

In polychronic societies, people perform several activities simultaneously and take a fluid approach to scheduling time. To polychrons (or people from polychronic cultures), time is continuous and has no particular structure. It resembles a never-ending river, flowing from the infinite past, through the present, and into the infinite future. According to Raymond Cohen, polychronic cultures have all the time in the world; the clock face has very little importance in societies where perceptions of time are determined by the cycle of the seasons, the unchanging patterns of rural life, and the calendar of religious festivities.

Arabic, African, Latin American, and southeast Asian countries are commonly described as polychronic cultures. The Indonesians, for example, have the expression jam karet (or “rubber time”), meaning that deadlines, schedules, and agendas are flexible and stretchable. Many traditional Arabs believe it is impious and irreligious to attempt to see into the future. God, not man, is in charge of what will happen. The Arabic term Insh’allah (or “God willing”) conveys this belief.

By contrast, monochrons prefer to do one thing at a time. The ideal is to focus their attention solely on one activity, complete that activity, and then move on to the next. In a monochronic culture, time is considered to be discrete rather than continuous. It can be divided up into fixed segments—seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, years, and so on—and scheduled, organized, and managed. Monochrons see time as something that is almost tangible: They talk about time as if it were money, as something that can be “spent,” “saved,” “wasted,” or “lost.”

The countries of North America and northern Europe are generally considered to have a predominantly monochronic sense of time. In the United Kingdom, monochronic perceptions of time have been described as a legacy of the Industrial Revolution: factory life required the labor force to be on hand and in place at an appointed hour. In the monochronic United States, a great majority of people have grown up in a time system that uses whistles or bells to count off the hours of the day. It is perhaps no surprise that techniques for “time management” were developed in the United States.

Business Implications

The workplace provides a fruitful environment for observing differences in polychronic and monochronic senses of time. Polychrons will typically never arrive at work at the same time every day, preferring instead the flexibility of keeping their daily routines unstructured. Similarly, they do not like to have detailed work schedules or project plans imposed on them, nor do they like to draw up their own schedules. Polychrons shun deadlines in favor of completing projects in their way, and in their own time. They also find dividing their time between a number of ongoing projects to be both stimulating and productive, and thus the most desirable way to work. Since they are capable of easily switching their attention from one activity to another, the polychrons are typically the colleagues seen simultaneously e-mailing, phoning, and eating in important business meetings.

In contrast to polychrons, monochrons prefer to plan and structure their workloads in detail. They tend to start work at the same time each day, and make lists to monitor the tasks that they need to complete on a daily basis in order to meet fixed targets and deadlines. Whenever projects consist of several individual tasks, they prefer to focus on one at a time. Only when one task is complete will they move on to the next. For a monochron, dividing attention back and forth from one activity to another is wasteful use of scarce resources, distracting, and above all else uncomfortable: in the workplace, monochrons are therefore more likely than polychrons to turn down any additional, unanticipated work and may appear uncooperative in crisis situations.

These differences between monochronic and polychronic perceptions of time can and do lead to cultural misunderstandings and conflicts in international business. The scheduling of meetings provides a case in point. If, for example, two American and Brazilian business partners agree to start a meeting at 2 p.m., the American would most likely arrive at the designated meeting place in advance of the agreed meeting time: after all, his time is money. The Brazilian, however, would think nothing of arriving late: he may have to finish off an unplanned business lunch with a colleague, or drop by his office to check his e-mail, before starting the meeting. The American would most likely be extremely frustrated by the Brazilian’s late arrival; for his part, the Brazilian would be offended by the American’s insistence on punctuality or on getting right down to business.

Similarly, time-management systems do not transfer well between one culture and another. Traditional time-management programs are monochronic insofar as they emphasize to-do lists and careful scheduling. Research shows, however, that businesses in a polychronic society either reject or do not adjust well to such systems. Multinational companies that impose these monochronic systems on their subsidiaries in polychronic societies are often accused of being ethnocentric, which means that they impose their own ethnic or cultural values on others.

Critiques

As much as Hall’s concepts of monochronic versus polychronic perceptions of time are relatively easy to understand, they have nonetheless been challenged by some critics. Some detractors claim that, although Hall’s concepts are very useful for understanding different attitudes toward time, they are not backed up by empirical data. Others argue that the distinction between monochronic and polychronic perceptions of time is overly generalized. They counter that, within any one cultural group, or within any single country, it is possible to identify people who think differently about time. In China, for example, the inhabitants of the industrialized, southern provinces are said to have a monochronic perception of time while those living in the less industrially developed interior are considered to be more polychronic. Consequently, claim these critics, it is more useful to think of time differences among individuals, not just between cultural groups or countries.

Other critics argue that research based on Hall’s dichotomy is value laden, concealing the assumption that there is only one correct way of understanding time. For example, researchers from monochronic cultures have criticized polychronic time systems for “forcing” people to tolerate interruptions and combine tasks that could be performed more effectively if done separately. Conversely, researchers from polychronic cultures have criticized monochronic time systems for their inefficiency, inflexibility, and sluggishness. In reality, argue the critics, there is neither a right nor a wrong way to think about time; there are just different ways of doing so, and each one has its own distinct strengths and weaknesses.

Bibliography:

Aaron Arndt, Todd Arnold, and Timothy D. Landry, “The Effects of Polychronic-Orientation Upon Retail Employee Satisfaction and Turnover,” Journal of Retailing (v.82/4, 2006);
Raymond Cohen, Negotiating Across Cultures: International Communication in an Interdependent World (United States Institute of Peace Press, 1997);
June Cotte, Ratneshwar, and David Glen Mick, “The Times of Their Lives: Phenomenological and Metaphorical Characteristics of Consumer Timestyles,” Journal of Consumer Research (v.31/2, 2004);
Richard Gesteland, Cross-Cultural Business Behaviour: Marketing, Negotiating, Sourcing and Managing Across Cultures (Copenhagen Business School Press, 2002);
Edward Hall, The Silent Language (Anchor Books, 1990);
Gregory M. Rose, Roberto Evaristo, and Detmar Straub, “Culture and Consumer Responses to Web Download Time: A Four-Continent Study of Mono and Polychronism,” IEEE Transactions of Engineering Management (v.50/1, 2003);
Susan Schneider and Jean-Louis Barsoux, Managing Across Cultures, 2nd ed. (Prentice Hall Financial Times, 2003).

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