EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Polychronicity is the extent to which people prefer to switch among multiple tasks in the same time-block.  It has been studied in research productivity and corporate creativity contexts, but its impact upon the retailing profession has yet to be explored.  This is surprising, given that retailing stands out as a work environment where employee time use is critical and where the management of multiple tasks within a given period of time is often the norm.  For front-line retail employees, the structure of work tasks is largely dictated by customers.  At any given point a customer may choose to interact with an employee who, at the time, may be involved in performing ancillary tasks, such as stocking a shelf or constructing a display.  Because interruption is common in retailing, polychronicity will likely have a significant impact on employee job satisfaction and turnover. 

Studies of polychronic task-switching find that certain individuals are more bothered by interruption than others, and that some individuals like to switch between tasks more than others.  Thus, polychronic individuals should be more likely to enjoy the retail role and less likely to quit their jobs.  Based on the concept of employee/work fit, we found a direct effect of polychronicity on job satisfaction and a subsequent reduction in an employee’s intention to quit.  Polychronicity was also found to impact self-assessments of fairness about how the organization distributes rewards (such as pay)—with polychronic employees being more likely to view their rewards as fair than monochronic employees (i.e., employees who prefer a single task, start to finish, in a given time block ). 

In hypothesizing these effects, we argued that in early career stages polychronicity impacts satisfaction more than in later stages.  In support, we found that perceptions of fairness (i.e., the indirect effect of polychronicity) were influenced by polychronicity in the earliest career stage.  While initially viewing their job as unfair, it seems that monochronic employees begin to realize that everyone’s efforts are rewarded justly.  On the other hand, the direct effect (from employee fit) appears to persist throughout an employee’s career.  Because satisfaction continues to be affected by polychronicity, the retail work environment never appears to be “accepted” by a monochronic retail employee. 

This dissatisfaction with the retail job is a problem not only in its direct cost, through employee turnover, but also through the enormous hidden cost of customer unhappiness and defection, which accompanies a frustrated workforce.  Our findings revealed that managing the “front-end” of employment (i.e., the appropriate hiring of polychronic individuals) is important since it is unlikely that employees change their preference for a monochronic or polychronic work style.  Simply attracting employees using the allure of financial rewards (an “any-takers” approach) may prove unhealthy in the long term for the individual and for the firm.  Human resource managers should, instead, attempt to identify the time-style of their organization and interview for individuals that will be a good match.  Hiring based on matching work-styles with jobs should be a low-cost investment with a long-term payoff.