It is about Time! TMT temporal orientation and competitive behaviors

Time emerges as a very important topic in competitive dynamics. However, the role of executives’ perceptions of time has rarely been examined. Building on the subjective perspective in competitive dynamics and upper echelons theory, I argue for a subjective perspective of time and propose that top management teams’ (TMT) temporal orientation can explain additional variance in competitive actions. I investigate this research topic in two essays. In essay one, I focus on TMT temporal focus (the extent to which a TMT as a whole devotes attention to past, present and future time frames) and examine the relationships among TMT temporal focus, competitive aggressiveness (a firm’s tendency to initiate actions frequently and quickly at a given time) and firm performance. In essay two, I investigate how TMT polychronicity (the extent to which a TMT as a whole prefers to be engaged in multiple tasks simultaneously) interacts with past performance and industry uncertainty in shaping competitive action complexity (the degree to which a firm engages in many different types of actions), nonconformity (the degree to which a firm’s competitive actions deviate from industry norms) and intensity (the number of actions a firm initiates at a given time). I test these hypotheses using survey data from Chinese small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

Many thanks to Jianhong’s Final Defense committee: Committee Chair: Sucheta Nadarni, Ph.D. Associate Professor in Management Committee Member: VK Narayanan, Ph.D. Delloitte Touche Jones Stubbs Professor in Management Committee Member: Christian Resick, Ph.D. Associate Professor in Management Committee Member: Daniel Tzabbar, Ph.D. Assistant Professor in Management Committee Member: Ming-Jer Chen, Ph.D. Leslie E. Grayson Professor at University of Virginia Committee Member: Zeki Simsek, Ph.D. Professor in Management at University of Connecticut