The Interactions among Time Urgency, Uncertainty, and Time Pressure

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the tempo of life has continually accelerated (McGrath & Kelly, 1986). At the close of the twentieth century, life revolves ever more around the clock, especially in Western cultures Rifkil, in his book Time Wars (1987), proposes that computers are contributing to an exponentially accelerating time orientation. Computer hardware operations can be carried out as fast as billionths of a second, and this capability has set new temporal standards of organizational effectiveness and efficiency. This accelerated time orientation affects every aspect of a work organization. Perhaps the most substantial challenge facing employees as a result of this time orientation is trying to choose between alternative courses of action while under this time pressure. It is likely that time pressure does not affect everyone in the same way. It may prove challenging to one individual and debilitating to another. In fact, temporal orientation has been recognized as one of the fundamental parameters of individual differences (Bluedorn & Denhardt, 1988).

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