Time traps that academic administrators face and coping methods: Akdeni̇z University sample

The general purpose of this study is to determine what the time traps are for the academic managers, detection of which time traps they fall into and present whether or not there are methods they use to eliminate these time traps. This research is a qualitative research conducted holistic single case design. The study group of the research consist of a total 16 academic managers who are in the administrative position of four faculties teaching in the field of social sciences at Akdeniz University. In this qualitative research, it is being attempted to put forward the academic managers' time management knowledge, the rate of falling into time traps and whether or not they know or what extent they utilise the methods regarding how to cope with time traps. The questions in the interview form that were generated in order to reach these data were recorded during the personal interviews. Voice recordings were transcribed and coding were made later on. According to descriptive and content analysis of data, time traps of academic managers were grouped into personal time traps and organizational time traps. For personal time traps, codes such as "inability to say no", "open-door policy" and "socialising"; and for organisational time traps, "drop-in visitors", "unscheduled meetings"," social media/internet" and "phone calls/messages" codes were found to be prominent. It is found that academic managers generally do not receive any training in time management and they do not utilise any methods as a means of coping with time traps. In the study results, it was observed that, being time-trapped has negative aspects which affect individuals and these were mostly described as "anger", "low ego" and "exhaustion" codes. It was determined that to get rid of these negative feelings, they resort some codes like "spending time with family", reading a book" and "going to cinema/plays". Amongst 16 academic directors which were included in the study, five say they received time management training, 12 think it would be beneficial to get trained on time management and just seven say they were willing to attend such a training. In the study, it was analyzed that how academic directors schedule their time and level of actualizing their actions in compliance with the schedule. While condition of actualizing is analyzed in terms of sticking to the plan and experience subthemes; condition of non-actualizing is analyzed in terms of lack of self discipline, unexpected happenings, drop-in visitors, pressure from management, periodical workload and team members' omissions subthemes. Keywords: Time Management, Time Traps, Coping Methods of Time Traps, Higher Education, Academic Manager