A Tippie College of Business researcher has received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how people manage time at work that could help increase business efficiency. 

Yiduo Shao, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship, will receive $257,000 to study how people manage their time in relationship to their co-workers. In particular, the study will analyze how leaders and employees jointly optimize their use of time at work.

This is the fourth NSF grant Tippie researchers have been awarded in the last three years. 

Qihang Lin, associate professor of business analytics, received an $800,000 award from NSF and Amazon in 2022 to study how to make artificial intelligence algorithms less discriminatory. Beth Livingston, associate professor of management and entrepreneurship, received a $100,000 grant in 2021 to study the impact of artificial intelligence on clerical jobs. And Kang Zhao, associate professor of business analytics, and Rong Su, associate professor of management and entrepreneurship, received a $288,000 grant in 2022 to study why men continue to publish more scientific papers despite increasing numbers of women scientists. 

Shao said the findings of her studies will help businesses and organizations improve how they create timelines and schedule meetings so the organization can be run more efficiently and cost effectively. 

“If you don’t manage each other’s time as well as your own, it causes problems from disorganization,” she said. “This will help workers and managers be more aware of the importance of managing other peoples’ time in relation to your own.”

The grant, “The Conceptualization, Dynamics, and Impacts of Leader and Follower Temporal Management in Contemporary Workplaces,” will be awarded over three years. Shao is the principal investigator and shares the $431,000 grant with co-principal investigator Yifan Song of Texas A&M University.

Media contact: Tom Snee, 319-384-0010 (o); 319-541-8434 (c); tom-snee@uiowa.edu