The multitasking phenomenon is very prevalent among students. Research on the multitasking phenomenon has either explored the extent to which it exists among students, or assessed the impact of multitasking on students' learning activities through non-voluntary multitasking experiments. However, what causes students to multitask has not received much attention. As multitasking has become a part of students' lives, it is important to understand the possible antecedents and the possible effects of the multitasking phenomenon on students. The purpose of this study is to investigate factors influencing students' multitasking behavior as well as the relationship between multitasking behavior and students' academic achievement. This was accomplished through the lens of polychronicity and behavior studies where polychronicity, sensation seeking, and technology dependence were identified as the predictors of multitasking. Viewpoints from psychology studies, brain studies, and empirical research indicated learning under distractions impairs students learning. 230 usable observations were collected through an online survey. This study adopted a two-step approach in testing the proposed model. Results of the measurement model exhibited appropriate construct validity. Following the measurement model, the structural model suggested polychronicity and sensation seeking were predictors of students' multitasking behavior, whereas technology dependence did not make a significant contribution to students' multitasking behavior. The results of the structural model also suggested that multitasking did impact students' academic performance. However, the impact found in this study contradicted that found in previous research.

This dissertation consists of four studies examining two constructs related to time orientation in organizations: polychronicity and multitasking. The first study investigates the internal structure of polychronicity and its external correlates in a sample of undergraduate students (N = 732). Results converge to support a one-factor model and finds measures of polychronicity to be significantly related to extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience. The second study quantitatively reviews the existing research examining the relationship between polychronicity and the Big Five factors of personality. Results reveal a significant relationship between extraversion and openness to experience across studies. Studies three and four examine the usefulness of multitasking ability in the prediction of work related criteria using two organizational samples (N = 175 and 119, respectively). Multitasking ability demonstrated predictive validity, however the incremental validity over that of traditional predictors (i.e., cognitive ability and the Big Five factors of personality) was minimal. The relationships between multitasking ability, polychronicity, and other individual differences were also investigated. Polychronicity and multitasking ability proved to be distinct constructs demonstrating differential relationships with cognitive ability, personality, and performance. Results provided support for multitasking performance as a mediator in the relationship between multitasking ability and overall job performance. Additionally, polychronicity moderated the relationship between multitasking ability and both ratings of multitasking performance and overall job performance in Study four. Clarification of the factor structure of polychronicity and its correlates will facilitate future research in the time orientation literature. Results from two organizational samples point to work related measures of multitasking ability as a worthwhile tool for predicting the performance of job applicants.

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Master of Science / Hospitality Management and Dietetics / Kevin R. Roberts / The present study examined polychronicity, an individual’s preference on engaging in multiple activities simultaneously as opposed to one at a time. In the restaurant setting, it is critical to understand whether a server prefers to engage in and switch among multiple tasks because it directly impacts the level of job satisfaction and work engagement the server experiences. The purpose of the study was to present a comprehensive view on relationships among time use preference, job satisfaction, work engagement, and turnover intention within a restaurant context. It was hypothesized that polychronicity positively predicted employee job satisfaction and work engagement and negatively predicted employee turnover intention. The sample of 251 respondents were full-time food and beverage servers working at full-service restaurants in the United States. A principle component factor analysis with varimax rotation was conducted to identify the factor structure of polychronicity, job satisfaction, work engagement, and turnover intention. Multiple regression analysis was utilized to empirically test the proposed hypotheses. The result of the analysis supported that polychronicity positively predicted job satisfaction and work engagement. In addition, both job satisfaction and work engagement negatively predicted turnover intention. However, the result did not support the hypothesized negative relationship between polychronicity and turnover intention. The findings of the study will assist restaurant managers in selecting candidates that best fit their organization. It will also assist employees in determining which career path best matches their personality traits. Managerial implications, limitations of this study, and direction for future study were discussed.

This study aims to address the organizational temporality issues based upon the theory of time, interaction, and performance and self-regulation perspective. This study demonstrates the multi-level main effects of both team-level temporal norm and individual temporal perception and also the cross level moderating effects of team temporal management practices. This study answers the calls of incorporating temporal constructs in explaining team members¡¦ performance and exploring these issues within the formal consideration of multilevel modeling. This study also links the needed flexibility and temporality in modern manufacturing context with employee adaptive performance and temporal characteristics of team members. Specifically, this study collects data from 132 teams and 488 employees from southern Taiwan¡¦s Export Process Zones. Results demonstrates that team level polychronicity and individual level perceived control of time act as significant antecedents of employee adaptive performance after controlling individual personality characteristics. Moreover, team temporal management practices consisted of temporal planning, temporal reminders, and temporal reflexivity as a bundle quadratically enhance the linkage between employees¡¦ perceived control of time and their adaptivity.

A study by Ophir, Nass & Wagner found that younger adults who are heavy media multitaskers (HMM) perform worse on cognitive measures assessing inhibitory control. Previous findings indicated no benefit to being an HMM, however extrapolating from the aging literature wherein older adults can use distraction beneficially, the authors hypothesized that HMMs might show parallel gains. Two tasks (Reading with Distraction, and the Flanker task) are reported with regard to trait media multitasking preference in undergraduates. As expected, LMMs generally outperformed HMMs, but less consistently than predicted. The hypothesis was not proven; media multitaskers, while 4x more likely to recognize the implicit nature of the task, were not more likely to use previously distracting information suggesting that a different mechanism is operating in HMMs than older adults who readily use this information.

A study by Ophir, Nass & Wagner found that younger adults who are heavy media multitaskers (HMM) perform worse on cognitive measures assessing inhibitory control. Previous findings indicated no benefit to being an HMM, however extrapolating from the aging literature wherein older adults can use distraction beneficially, the authors hypothesized that HMMs might show parallel gains. Two tasks (Reading with Distraction, and the Flanker task) are reported with regard to trait media multitasking preference in undergraduates. As expected, LMMs generally outperformed HMMs, but less consistently than predicted. The hypothesis was not proven; media multitaskers, while 4x more likely to recognize the implicit nature of the task, were not more likely to use previously distracting information suggesting that a different mechanism is operating in HMMs than older adults who readily use this information.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:26:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Regina Lombardi.pdf: 1120890 bytes, checksum: 547e07e4ca67849eb0476b0be1f0ec3f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-02-12 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / A constant presence in the day-by-day of industrial societies, 'time' has been experienced in multiple dimensions in the organizational environment. To do several activities at the same time, or to deal with only one activity at a time: these are different strategies used by people to organize their time and resources and achieve their goals. This phenomenon, called polychronicity, is a way on how individuals differ, and brings some implications to organizational activities' performance. This study aimed to explore the relationship between some socio-demographic and organizational factors and individual polychronicity's level. The exploratory-descriptive research was conducted using quantitative method. The sample was composed by 246 professionals working in the Information Technology area. Results revealed no significant influence of socio-demographic factors, which are more directly linked to the individual and their personal choices, in the individual polychronicity level. However, this study revealed that some factors related to the organization, with emphasis to the organization polychronicity level perceived by the individual, seem to have more influence on how people organize their activities during a period of time. / Presença constante no dia-a-dia das sociedades industrializadas, o tempo tem sido experimentado em múltiplas dimensões no ambiente organizacional. Realizar várias atividades ao mesmo tempo ou lidar com uma atividade por vez são diferentes estratégias usadas pelas pessoas para organizar seus recursos de tempo e atingir seus objetivos. Este fenômeno, denominado policronicidade, é uma das formas de diferenciação entre os indivíduos, e pode trazer implicações para o desempenho de atividades organizacionais. Este estudo teve como objetivo explorar a relação entre determinados fatores sócio-demográficos e organizacionais e o grau de policronicidade individual. A pesquisa exploratório-descritiva foi conduzida pelo método quantitativo. A amostra foi composta por 246 profissionais que atuam na área de Tecnologia de Informações. Os resultados não revelaram influência significativa dos fatores sócio-demográficos, os quais são mais diretamente ligados ao indivíduo e suas escolhas pessoais, no grau de policronicidade individual. Por outro lado, este estudo contatou que alguns fatores ligados à organização, com destaque para o grau de policronicidade da empresa percebido pelo indivíduo, parecem exercer maior influência na forma como as pessoas organizam suas atividades em um período de tempo.

This study examined the relationship between several individual differences (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, creative self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and polychronicity) and creativity. It also examined how the organizational climate (support for creativity) moderated the relationship between the individual differences and creativity. All the individual differences except for polychronicity were positively correlated with creativity as well as support for creativity. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) found that the individual differences explained 58% of the variance in creativity and that support for creativity moderated the relationship between conscientiousness and creativity and between extraversion and creativity. Because of noticed similarity between creativity and creative self-efficacy items, a factor analysis was done which confirmed some overlap. Implications of the findings of this paper are discussed.

<p>With increasing demands in people’s work and life, successful self-regulation of multiple goals/tasks becomes important to one’s well-being and performance. One individual difference in this process is one’s preference for multitasking (i.e., polychronicity), which was found to be important in individuals’ psychological experience and performance. However, in terms of our understanding of the nature of this construct, there are at least two issues: 1) most research has assumed that preference for multitasking and preference for sequential pursuit are opposite ends of one continuum, which has not been directly tested; 2) different scales of polychronicity differ on their definitions of multitasking. To address these gaps, the present research seeks to clarify the relationships among individuals’ multitasking preferences and to develop a new and improved scale of these individual differences for future research in multitasking. To do so, three studies (<em>N</em> = 1367) were conducted to create and validate a scale that measures three potentially distinct preferences: concurrent preference, switching preference, and sequential preference. These studies empirically tested the relationships among the three preferences. The results were replicated in both goal and task contexts and with different response anchors. Findings suggest that it is questionable to assume multitasking preference and sequential preference are antithetical, while concurrent and switching preferences were highly correlated. I conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications and future directions for multitasking research.</p>