Henley Centre for Leadership Research Visit Series: The Impact of Temporal Schemata: Understanding When Individuals Entrain versus Resist or Create Temporal Structure – Professor Abbie Shipp, Neeley School of Business

Abbie Shipp, Professor of Management, Director of Adaptive Leader Executive Education Program,  Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University

As the pace of contemporary work increases, leaders in organizations seek to coordinate their employees’ efforts, particularly through the temporal coordination of rhythms. Yet little research has examined individual cognition, affect, and behavior in response to the “pull” of entrainment to an organization’s temporal structure. In this paper, we develop theory highlighting how individuals use temporal schemata—cognitive frameworks about time—to interpret and respond to temporal cues provided by an organization’s temporal structure (i.e., “push back”). In contrast to prior research, we propose that individuals can automatically or deliberately entrain, actively or passively resist, or create additional temporal structure. This model emphasizes the underdeveloped individual-level aspects of entrainment, contributing to future research by demonstrating that: 1) entrainment varies in degree and type, 2) entrainment (or lack thereof) is both cognitive and affective, and 3) entrainment may not be sustained. Several paradoxes are identified in how leaders can practically apply the model.

Biography

Dr. Abbie J. Shipp is a Professor of Management at Texas Christian University. Her research focuses on the psychological experience of time at work including: how individuals think about the past/present/future, trajectories of work experiences over time, how individuals react to change, and how time is spent on work tasks. Her work appears in premier outlets such as Academy of Management Review, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Personnel Psychology, and she is the co-editor (with Dr. Yitzhak Fried) of a two-volume book entitled, Time and Work. She is an editorial board member of Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Journal of Management. In addition to prior work at The Boeing Company and TV Guide as well as consulting work with multiple Fortune 500 companies, she is currently on the board of ZOE, a global non-profit focused on empowerment efforts for orphans and vulnerable children.