Unit 3 Assessment

Analyzing Your Time Orientation

Assessment goal: Analyze your personal orientation to time based on the model discussed in this unit.

Instructions

Part 1 – Self-assessment

1. Complete the 16-question Polychronic/Monochronic Personal Cultural Preferences Inventory , an online time-orientation self-assessment. This is a free, online inventory. Follow the instructions on the webpage to complete the self-assessment.

2. Calculate and record your score and time orientation preference here.

YOUR SCORE (0-160): 40Time Orientation: Highly Monochronic

“It is impossible to know how many millions of dollars have been lost in international business because monochronic and polychronic people do not understand each other or even know that two such different time systems exist.”

Hall, E. T. (1990). Understanding cultural differences: Germans, French, and American. Yarmouth, ME: International Press.

Part 2 – Follow-up Questions

Review your results and answer the following questions:

Question 1: Does this description fit you? Why/why not? Provide one example from your professional or academic life that illustrates your time orientation. (4 marks)Yes, this description fits me well. I consider myself as a good organizer and I believe that I have an excellent time management skills. I would illustrate this explanation using the following routine that I do not only in a professional or academic life, but in my everyday life.

I possess a physical day planner that I use to keep track of deadlines for assignments, appointments, exams, projects, meetings, etc. In addition to recording the deadlines, I also record when I would actually start and work on each task. For example, I would record that 31st of January will be the deadline of the project and I would also record that 15th of January will be when I would initiate the project and contact my group, as an example.

I pride myself as a very punctual person and have never been late to any of my classes, work, appointments, and meetings for quite some time now. I also tend to finish my tasks/projects before the deadline.

Question 2: State your home country and identify the prevalent time orientation in your home country. (1 mark)My home country is Indonesia. Based on my observation, Indonesians tend to have a polychronic time orientation. They deeply value relationships when doing business and we even have a saying “jam karet”, which means “rubber time”, showing how the concept of time there is not as rigid as it is here in Canada/USA.

Question 3: How would your time orientation affect your working relationships if it was not as the same as the dominant time orientation in a given country? (3 marks)My time orientation does not match the time orientation in my home country as I was raised by parents who had received education in the USA and therefore, their time orientation also leaned more to being monochronic.

When I started working as a tutor in an education centre in Indonesia before I started my undergraduate degree in Canada, I would often see other tutors and students arriving slightly later than the confirmed starting hours and ending much later than the agreed hours. I would almost always be the earliest one in the whole office.

Because of this, sometimes I would need to take a step back and take a deep breath to understand that being late is tolerable in Indonesia. I tried to discuss punctuality with my co-workers if time is of a particular concern when we are teaching together. It is very important to openly communicate our expectations in order to work together in a good environment.

Question 4: How might the differences in time orientation affect decision-making or pace of work in collective/group-oriented and individualist societies? (3 marks)From personal experience, difference in time orientation would greatly affect decision making and pace of work in a group-oriented setting. For example, when a friend of mine, Carla, started working on a group project with 3 other students, she did not realize that they have different expectations. The other students promised to meet her at 3 PM to start the project but they did not show up until 5 PM, saying that they met another friend and ended up spending time with him.In this case, the other students do not see anything wrong with being late.

However, Carla was deeply offended that they did not respect her time and just wasted 2 hours of her time waiting. If this continues, the group will not work well together because they would resent each other, without knowing that they just have different expectations of time that has not been communicated.

I think, in an individualist societies, difference in time orientation would still affect decision making and pace of work, but not as greatly as it would in a group-oriented setting. Everyone can work at their own pace individually but at some point, their work would affect the work of other people and being tardy could mean finishing the project on time or not.

Name: Lydia TerisnoDate: 12 January 2014