Time and Strategic Action

A business organization's sense of time is revealed through action and, specifically, through its approach to strategic planning. This paper presents a way of analysing an organization's temporal identity. We develop a framework showing the levels of strategic planning and their cross-cultural variability, especially in relation to Japanese temporal culture (Makimono time). The example of the strategies pursued by international banks originating from the US, the UK, Germany and Japan illustrates how a strategic time perspective is a reflection of the temporal cognitive styles prevailing in a particular culture. We further show the influence exerted by the constituencies to which an organization is beholden, the definition of performance criteria and their reinforcement through human resource management policies.