When you are invited to someone’s home for dinner, when is it appropriate to arrive? Early, the exact time of the invitation, or twenty minutes (or even two hours!) later? Time orientation, or the way cultures communicate about and with time, is an important—yet frequently overlooked—cultural dimension (Hall, 1959).

Many Western cultures (such as the United States and Great Britain) are extremely time-conscious. Every portion of the day is oriented around time—including time for meals, bed, meetings, and classes. Even sayings express the importance of time: time is money, no time to lose, wasting time (Mast, 2002). But in many Latin American and Asian cultures, time is fluid and the pace of life is slower. Arriving two hours late for an invitation is perfectly acceptable. An American businessperson might get frustrated and give up after spending six months working on a deal with a Japanese company, when the Japanese may be wondering why the Americans quit so soon when they were all just getting to know each other!

A key cultural distinction operating here is whether cultures are monochronic or polychronic (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988; Hall, 1976; Victor, 1992). Monochronic cultures treat time as a limited resource. Such cultures (including the United States, Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom) use time to structure activities and focus on attending to one person or task at a time; they value concentration and stick to schedules. In monochronic cultures, people line up to wait their “turn”—to see a professor at office hours, to check out at the grocery store, to get into a concert. Polychronic cultures are comfortable dealing with multiple people and tasks at the same time. Seven or eight people all crowding around a stall and shouting out their needs at a mercado in Mexico is expected, not rude. Polychronic cultures (such as in Mexico, India, and the Philippines) are also less concerned with making every moment count. They don’t adhere as closely to schedules, are less likely to make or attend to appointments, and change plans often and easily.

Even Web-based communication can be affected by such differences in the perception of time. One study found that people from polychronic cultures were less bothered by download delays than were people from monochronic cultures (Rose, Evaristo, & Straub, 2003).