Temporal Dynamics in Organizational Psychology

Abstract

The role of time and time dynamics is crucial to our understanding of important Organizational Psychology phenomena such as organizational change, work–family experiences, in-role and extra-role performance, deviance, job insecurity, work design, job crafting, psychological contracts, organizational justice, incivility, talent management, human resource management, organizational decision-making, organizational commitment, personality, leadership, emotions, motivation, team work, employee well-being and health, safety, and so forth. Specifically, the inclusion of time and temporal dynamics is essential to better explain “when” a phenomenon occurs, “what” aspects of the phenomenon are being influenced, “how” these aspects are being influenced, and “why” this influence occurs. Such a dynamic way of thinking can challenge existing knowledge and traditional ways of theory building and conducting empirical research in the field of Organizational Psychology. Despite the crucial role of time and temporal dynamics, it receives little acknowledgement in the Organizational Psychology literature and most published work has not made reference to time and/or time dynamics in its methods, findings, or conclusions. This stands in stark contrast with Organizational Psychology, a field that is devoted to the study of processes and guided by the principles of time and temporal dynamics. Several scholars have expressed concerns about this inconsistency in the literature and its detrimental consequences for the validity and accuracy of the field’s corpus of knowledge. It is therefore important to clarify what is meant by time and temporal dynamics and how the Organizational Psychology literature has dealt with this operationalization of time. An ideal way to do so is to provide a review (for the period 2000–2020) of the Industrial and Organizational Psychology literature with reference to the word “time.” This review reveals that the most popular approach to time has been that of “time as a construct or variable” (43.28%), followed by “time as future prediction” (29.48%), “time in theory development or improvement” (18.28%), and “time in methodology” (8.96%). Following this review, it is imperative to propose the essential elements to which “good” time-sensitive theory and research should adhere: (a) constructs and psychological phenomena should be clearly defined with reference to the time window within which they are expected to fluctuate and/or change, (b) relationships between constructs should be defined in relation to time and/or the unfolding nature of a construct or psychological phenomena should be specified, (c) temporal features of a construct or psychological phenomenon should be defined and described in detail, and (d) temporal metrics should be defined with reference to the specific timescales, time frames, and time lags that should to be used to measure the construct or psychological phenomenon. In addition to incorporating these essential elements of “good” time-sensitive theory and research, researchers should be made aware of possible future trends for the inclusion of time and temporal dynamics in theory building and empirical research. As a corollary, this inspires and directs future research in Organizational Psychology to acknowledge and incorporate the important role of time and temporal dynamics.