I Left Venus and Came Back to Mars: Temporal Focus Congruence in Dyadic Relationships Following Maternity Leave

Abstract

Temporal focus on past, present, and future of contributions to work is critical to understanding how employees and their line managers navigate career disruptions and minimize their potential for negative impact. This paper reframes temporal focus using a dyadic, relational perspective to explore how temporal focus (in)congruence shapes resocialization experiences for returners and their line managers following maternity leave disruption. Our qualitative study draws on 54 interviews across 27 organizations and demonstrates that a congruent, broader temporal focus—that embraces the past, present, and future—is associated with more positive relational and career outcomes than an incongruent focus, where one dyadic partner holds a narrow temporal focus. Our findings explicate how the adoption of a broad versus narrow temporal focus creates a perception of maternity leave as either a brief interlude or a major disruption. A congruent, broader temporal focus allows returners and their line managers to reduce their reliance on typical motherhood biases and instead, consider the woman’s past, present, and potential future contributions over the course of her career. We highlight the importance of temporal focus congruence at a dyadic level and the value of adopting a broader temporal focus on careers while offering new insights regarding the temporal dynamics inherent to maternity leave transitions for both returners and their managers.

Organization‐investor fit: The role of temporal preferences in shaping investor attraction and organizational performance

“…At the micro level, we contribute to nascent research exploring temporal fit between individuals by further establishing this as an important form of fit. Empirical research in this area has primarily focused on supervisory relationships (Briker et al, 2020;Freeney et al, 2022), but our findings suggest that temporal fit may be important to a broad array of relationships and show the need for future research in this area.…”

“…Third, our work highlights temporal preference as a critical dimension of fit that scholars could apply across different types of relationships. Although researchers have theorized that temporal preference fit may be important (Eldor et al., 2017; Shipp et al., 2009), there are few empirical studies on its role (i.e., supervisor‐team fit; Briker et al., 2020; Freeney et al., 2022). By demonstrating the benefits of O‐I fit along temporal preferences, our study suggests that the inherent temporal preferences parties bring to their relationships may have important implications for other types of fit and thus should spark broader research in this area.…”

When Top Managers’ Temporal Orientations Collide: Middle managers and the strategic use of the past

“…Second, our analysis suggests that middle managers’ use of the past is not just an ever- changing process, but a continuous process of relational engagement (Emirbayer, 1997), as individual temporal orientations influence or are influenced by the temporal socialization process. While previous studies indicate that actors need to be open to multiple temporalities, simultaneously navigate different temporal demands (Jarvenpaa & Välikangas, 2021) and achieve temporal congruence in order to avoid relational conflict (Freeney, van der Werff, & Collings, 2022), we explain how and why different types of middle managers influence and are influenced by their temporal orientations, top managers and frontline workers over time and come to agree on how to use the past. Thus, unlike studies that apply relational constructionism (Hosking, 2011) and highlight the competitive (Cailluet et al, 2018) and authoritative (Aeon & Lamertz, 2021) ways in which top managers tend to use the past, our findings shift the emphasis to the flexible and collaborative ways in which middle managers use the past.…”

Simply the best? Star performers and high‐potential employees: Critical reflections and a path forward for research and practice

“…We also know that there are stages in women's lives and careers where ratings of potential – and access to career support – are most at risk. For example, managers often discount past performance and downplay the future potential of HiPo women upon their return to the workplace after maternity leaves (Freeney et al., 2021; Paustian‐Underdahl et al., 2019).…”