The best of intentions and the worst of results : monochronicity and the employment of feedback avoiding behavior as a temporal self-regulatory strategy

Abstract

I integrate temporal self-regulatory theory with literature on personal value of time and social information processing theory to consider an individual's adoption of feedback avoiding behavior as a temporal self-regulatory strategy motivated by both internal factors (i.e., an individual employee's monochronicity) and external factors (i.e., the interaction partner's monochronicity and their relationship quality). In a two-wave time-lagged, two-source field study with 92 Chinese mentor-protégé dyads, I found that protégés' monochronicity was positively associated with their feedback avoiding behavior and this relationship was mitigated by mentors' monochronicity. Results also showed that this two-way interaction was further moderated by mentor-protégé mentorship quality. Specifically, when mentor-protégé mentorship quality was high, the moderation effect of mentor monochronicity became stronger such that protégés’ monochronicity was not only less positively related but also became negatively related to their feedback avoiding behavior. I discuss important theoretical and practical implications. Keywords: Individual time value orientation; monochronicity; temporal self-regulation; feedback avoiding behavior

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology