Issues of Time management at a workplace in Kazakhstan

Akhtanova Madina
Suleyman Demirel University
Kazakhstan, Kaskelen
Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences
Specialty: Finance
Email: madina-akhtanova@mail.ru

Abstract Nowadays conditions of rapid rise of competition around the world induce companies to pay attention to absolutely new fields of management. This research concentrates on the field , called Time management. The paper here looks at whether Kazakhstan companies use and have good time management techniques and if they apply Stephen R.Covey’s popular theory of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. The purpose of this study is to examine the omissions of Kazakhstan companies in this issue and find the ways of correction. The sample of 85 companies, locating in Almaty, Astana, Shymkent and Aktobe has chosen to participate in this research. Data was collected through the results of well-constructed questionnaires and by the agency of general managers of companies. Questionnaire was distributed to all potential respondents. A total of 76 companies returned the completed questionnaire. The finding shows that most companies have placed low emphasis on company time management. In addition, the results identifies that only small portion of companies are familiar with the book «The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people» by Stephen Covey. With greater competition in the globalized market, this research implicates that Kazakhstan companies also should give greater priority to dynamic developments in time management in order to survive in the market place.

Introduction
The importance of time management process that has the huge benefits, as greater productivity, professional reputation, less stress, opportunities to achieve desired career goals. Especially, all of works, relating this topic distinguish the time management in business sector as the most significant. There is lack of information about the current and future development of business time management in Kazakhstan. For this reason, this paper is supposed to be useful in identifying the actual problems. «Time management systems have become exceedingly popular in recent years... and with good reason. The ultimate potential benefit of such systems is the ability to optimize how you spend your time in order to extract the best possible results in the shortest period of time.»(Steven Pavlina, 2010). Effective time management allows businesses to have comparative advantage and future prospective. Plenty of time management techniques, theories, skills and tools are available and described for businesses all around the world. Are these theories applicable to all businesses western or eastern? Does Kazakhstan take some advantages from them or even though use them? It is known that all available knowledge mostly refers to foreign authors, who write it relating to their country conditions and this paper discovers the applicability of famous theories for Kazakhstan conditions and especially with the Stephen R.Covey’s theory of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (1989). Time management is comparatively young study, relating the issue of its usage in the business process. Kazakhstan as many developing countries, are only starts to acquire the knowledge about time management and use it in the business to enhance their productivity. Since early 2000s we have noticed the appearance of new type of training and sessions in Kazakhstan, which initiates the attempt to inform business people as well as individuals with the topic of Time management skills and techniques. The main issue is that no information is available about whether these sessions are helpful and techniques and theories can be applied to in the real Kazakhstan workplace in practice.
Time management isn’t just a personal-productivity issue over which companies have no control; it has increasingly become an organizational issue whose root causes are deeply embedded in corporate structures and cultures.(Frankki Bevins and Aaron de Smet, 2013). The individual only can not contribute a lot with his knowledge about time management. All the theories advise some certain suggestions, such as: Be proactive, Begin with the end in mind (Seven habits of higly effective people, 1989); Set your priorities, Stay focused, Be disciplined and punctual (MSG experts); Prioritizing, Scheduling (Megan Totka, 2012). These skills can be understandable and applicable for one, but impossible to implement for another. Many people in Kazakhstan participate in the trainings about Time management, it seems that it is useful for him, but is it useful for the company where he works? Does that company support its employee's effort to become aware with the skills of Time management? Therefore the purpose of this work is to examine whether companies in Kazakhstan understand the importance of time management skills, whether western theories are relevant to them and what are the omissions of Kazakhstan companies.

Literature review With the general growth of Time management importance around the world this topic has attracted considerably attention in recent years. In an attempt to help people with this issue and express their own ideas, there are appeared many works of different authors. This topic has produced an extensive stream of literature. Although knowledge in the area of Time management has expanded, there is no studies and limited information to the Time management in Kazakhstan context. This means that Kazakhstan use the well-known foreign studies to investigate this topic properly. For this reason to discover this work I have used general literature about time management, to become aware of the main principles and to find the way in which omissions can be corrected. In early times literature on this issue was known more as success writings. They have focused on solutions to specific problems and in some cases such tactical advice may have been effective, but only for immediate issues and not for the long-term period. Anyway it was enough for that period of time. The success literature of the last half of the 20th century largely attributed success to personality traits, skills, techniques, maintaining positive attitude and etc. During the last 150 years, studies were more character oriented. It emphasized the deeper principles and foundations of success. Underlying characteristics are integrity, courage, justice, patience and etc. (Stephen R.Covey). The most successful and popular following work can be traced to the studies by Stephen R.Covey (1989 and 1993). He presents an «inside-out» approach to effectiveness that is centered on principals and character. Inside-out means the change start within oneself. (Summary of Stephen Covey's, 1989). More recent works were introduced by David Allen (2001), Brian Tracy (2001), Timothy Ferriss (2007), Laura Vanderkam (2010). The research questions of this study is concentrate on discovering whether companies in Kazakhstan use the techniques, offered by Stephen R.Covey. Therefore, the main literature on which theoretical background of this work is based is Stephen R.Covey’s work (1989). Rather than tackling specific problems or making external changes to processes, systems and so on, Covey's approach helps focus on developing yourself personally and your relationships with others (Mind tools, 2010). Stephen R.Covey's work has summed up all techniques into seven habits. Covey describes three distinct stages of personal growth that we move through as we develop these habits. First three take you from dependence to independence, next three to interdependece and last one to reinforce the others. That work is recognized as very convincing and for this reason it has sold more than 15 million copies in 38 languages. There are also some studies that look at seperately to the issues of time management in business sector. «Great time management skills are probably one of the most important skills to have when it comes to running a successful small business. While larger companies may have more of a luxury of time when it comes to selling products or closing on accounts, a small business that is just getting started can be broken by bad time management.» (Megan Totka, 2012). In that work author emphasize the greater importance of time management for small companies and offer some ways to practice time management for them. Some studies have found out some contradictions with the previous works and offer new insights. «I couldn’t remember a single one of the seven habits. That scared me because I used to love that little book. If I had to boil all these habits down to two, they’d be: do something, plan what you are taking action about. That's it» (Erick Jackson, 2012). My research objective is to find the applicability of all previously mentioned knowledge from different western literature to Kazakhstan context. According to my investigation, exactly the same works and even similar one was not written before this time. Therefore, this paper is providing absolutely new insight using known approaches and techniques.

Methodology This work mainly examines whether companies in Kazakhstan use any time management techniques and have some omissions in this issue. In addition, companies were asked do they use the theory, which Seven R.Covey offered in his book (1989). The philosophy of this study is built upon positivism aspect. As a result, quantitative method is used, this study is likely to use existing theory to develop hypothesis and test it to come to some results. The data was collected over a period from February 2015 and March 2015, since it was cross sectional study. The sample comprises of 85 companies, which locates in the biggest cities, as Almaty, Astana, Shymkent and Aktobe. The purposive sample of exactly these cities and these companies was chosen accurately to be appropriate for this study. The companies consist of small and big companies, as we concerned with the overall level of time management, not separate comparison. This work has used deductive research approach, as it involves only the collection of absence data; use a highly structured methodology and demands operationalization and generalization. A data was collected using survey strategy, in which mail questionnaire was chosen. For the questionnaire, 85 questionnaires were mailed to the selected companies, to be precise to the general manager, and then with their agency were distributed to employees. The questionnaire is structured and mixed, consisting both open and closed questions. The respondents were asked how they evaluate the level of development of time management in their company, any advantage that is taken from that, and whether they use the theory suggested by Stephen R.Covey in his work «The Seven habits of highly effective people» (1989). The mail questionnaire is recognized as quantitative method of research and it shows that this study applied mono method quantitative design. In the case when respondent answered to the question about Stephen R.Covey positively, the respondent should answer to following questionnaire, based on the stages, described in the theory. The respondents’ final answers were analyzed using descriptive statistics and items were measured by graphing and ordinary least square method.

References (only for these 4 sections) 1. «Summary of Stephen R.Covey's» (2010) article in QuickMBA 2. «Why Great Time Management is Important to Small Businesses», Renbor Sales Solutions Inc. Guest post- Megan Totka (September 19th ,2012) 3. Management Study Guide library articles. 4. «The Only Thing You Need To Remember About The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People». Erick Jackson (2012). Forbes article. 5. «Making time management the organization’s priority». Frankki Bevins and Aaron De Smet (2013), article from McKinsey Co official website. 6. «Time management». Steve Pavlina (2010). 7. «The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People» by Stephen R.Covey (1989). Main principles.