The Concept of Time-Based Competition in the Context of Management Theory

Abstract

Speed as a competitive factor is gaining more and more importance for companies involved in global market competition. The company tends to compete for rapid response to consumer demand and new products and technologies introduced to the market. This type of competition in terms of reaction time is described as timebased competition (TBC). Regardless of a number of practicians and scholars admitting in their works that time management will enable the company to achieve competitive advantage, there is still a lack of empirical research for proving this statement. In addition, today the concept of TBC requires a holistic attitude to time-based management that would integrate a great deal of different concepts, methods and tools of management theory, and would adjust production control systems, cost accounting systems and, at the same time, performance measurement systems with regard to time perspective. The problem is that there is no sufficient research on determining the importance of the time factor in the context of management theory or on systematizing various management concepts for establishing what influence they have on the contemporary perception of TBC. Hence, the main objective of this article is to systematize and analyze data provided by scientific literature sources in relation to the concept of TBC and its development in the context of management theory. In the present article the theoretical research involved the systematic and comparative analysis of scientific literature. The first segment of the article includes the definition of TBC, the analysis of advantages and implementation challenges provided by this concept. The second segment of the article involves the theoretical research on the significance of the time factor in the development of management theory and emphasizes the effect and/or contribution of the basic management concepts on/to the formation of the TBC concept and the emerging need for it in the immediate future. Companies engaged in TBC seek to reduce the amount of time devoted during each stage of the general cycle by eliminating non-value adding activities, shortening time and/or efficiently coordinating value adding activities. When response time to consumer needs is shorter than the one demonstrated by rivals, the company can achieve competitive supremacy that is greater and, on a frequent basis, tends to be dominant and is expressed in speed, which contributes to short delivery time, lower costs, higher quality, flexibility and credible delivery. The research demonstrated that although the term TBC is relatively new, the very concept of time-based management has been applied numerous times. The significance of time management dates back to the early 20th century, while dealing with works of classical management theory from a tactical perspective, and later on other concepts of management theory were applied to its development and expansion, for example, the contribution of the Management School to creating quantitative methods for time management; the systematic attitude that was used to prove the significance of time-based information in production and operations management and to stress the importance of process management within the organization both externally and internally, including quick response to changes, the elimination of “bottleneck”, resource use and management, and the synchronization of all existing links within the whole organization, and that served as foundation for the emergence of the TBC concept; and the dynamic attitude that expanded the concept of TBC by placing emphasis on the importance of time management as a constant process in the changing organization.