Le temps, la finance et le management des entreprises

Time is at the same time an economic resource and a valuable characteristic of choices. When taking an economic decision, time preference for immediacy questions how to give a psychological value to time. This article recalls that the value of time is a common dimension to finance and management theories. Economic choices refer to time when considering individual consumption or saving decisions or corporate organisational choices. We know that time horizons are not similar and time preferences complex. The concept of a decreasing subjective time value opens new perspectives to explain the influence of far long term in decision making. This possibility is counterbalanced by the traditional vision of short-termism attached to financial market valuation process. This bias does not imply a similar short term bias in corporate manager’s decisions. At last, we will recall that the strategic pace of choice is genuine to each firm and introduces a new time dimension in the firm’s decision process.