| Course | MT262 Leading Global Teams |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 4 |
| Paper type | Time zone working plan |
| Length | About 940 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT262 Unit 4
No Hour for Everyone: A Unit 4 Time Zone Working Plan for Four Offices Across 2026
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT262: Leading Global Teams
Unit 4 Time Zone Working Plan
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The tour-booking firm, its offices and meetings are composite and illustrative; time zone offsets and 2026 clock-change dates follow each location's published rules; the sources cited are real.
Assumptions
The team's working hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. local time, Monday to Friday, a flexible window the company allows so that offices can share more time. The offices sit in Arizona, Portugal, Vietnam and New Zealand. All times were computed from each location's published time zone rules for 2026.
Phoenix keeps Mountain Standard Time all year, seven hours behind UTC, because Arizona does not observe daylight saving time. Ho Chi Minh City keeps one offset all year, seven hours ahead of UTC. Lisbon is on UTC in winter and one hour ahead from March 29 to October 25, 2026. Auckland is thirteen hours ahead of UTC in its summer, until April 5, and twelve hours ahead from April 5 to September 27, 2026, when it moves back to thirteen.
Exhibit 1: The Overlap Grid
Shared working hours on a typical weekday, by pair, range as follows across the year.
Phoenix and Auckland: five or six hours, Phoenix 12:00 or 13:00 to 18:00 against Auckland 08:00 to 13:00 or 14:00 the next day; only Monday to Thursday in Phoenix, because Phoenix's Friday afternoon is Saturday in Auckland
Ho Chi Minh City and Auckland: four or five hours, Ho Chi Minh City mornings against Auckland afternoons
Lisbon and Ho Chi Minh City: three or four hours, Lisbon mornings against Ho Chi Minh City afternoons
Phoenix and Lisbon: two or three hours, Phoenix early mornings against Lisbon late afternoons
Lisbon and Auckland: none; the two are eleven to thirteen hours apart
Phoenix and Ho Chi Minh City: none; the two are fourteen hours apart all year
Exhibit 2: The Change Calendar
Four dates in 2026 change the gaps between offices.
March 29: Lisbon moves forward an hour; the Phoenix and Lisbon overlap shrinks from three hours to two, and Lisbon and Ho Chi Minh City gain an hour
April 5: Auckland moves back an hour; the Phoenix and Auckland overlap shrinks from six hours to five, and Ho Chi Minh City and Auckland gain an hour
September 27: Auckland moves forward an hour; the March pattern for Auckland returns
October 25: Lisbon moves back an hour; the winter pattern returns
The gap between Lisbon and Auckland moves from thirteen hours in January to twelve in early April, eleven through the southern winter, twelve again in October and thirteen from late October. Phoenix and Ho Chi Minh City never change, which makes them the plan's fixed points. Every recurring meeting invitation is created in the organizer's local time with the other offices listed, so calendar software adjusts it automatically on the change dates; the coordinator checks every invitation in the week of each change.
Weekly Pair Meetings
Weekly meetings run only between pairs that share hours, in the middle of their overlap.
Phoenix and Auckland: Tuesday 14:00 Phoenix, Wednesday 09:00 or 10:00 Auckland, product and partner support
Ho Chi Minh City and Auckland: Wednesday 09:00 Ho Chi Minh City, 14:00 or 15:00 Auckland, mobile releases and partner issues
Lisbon and Ho Chi Minh City: Thursday 09:00 Lisbon, 15:00 or 16:00 Ho Chi Minh City, backend and mobile integration
Phoenix and Lisbon: Monday 08:30 Phoenix, 15:30 or 16:30 Lisbon, planning and release approvals
Lisbon and Auckland never meet live in a weekly slot. Hinds and Bailey (2003) warn that pairs who rely only on delayed written exchange are more prone to misunderstanding and conflict, which is why this pair gets a structured written process rather than none. Their coordination goes through written handoffs, described in the next unit's process design, and through Ho Chi Minh City, which shares hours with both.
Exhibit 3: The All-Hands Rotation
The monthly all-hands brings all eleven people together for forty-five minutes. Because no hour works for all four offices, the plan uses four slots in rotation, each placing one office at night.
Slot A, 20:00 UTC: Phoenix 13:00, Lisbon 20:00 or 21:00, Auckland 08:00 or 09:00 the next day; Ho Chi Minh City at 03:00
Slot B, 08:00 UTC: Lisbon 08:00 or 09:00, Ho Chi Minh City 15:00, Auckland 20:00 or 21:00; Phoenix at 01:00
Slot C, 01:00 UTC: Phoenix at 18:00, Vietnam at 08:00, Auckland at 13:00 or 14:00; Lisbon at 01:00 or 02:00
Slot D, 15:00 UTC: Phoenix 08:00, Lisbon 15:00 or 16:00, Ho Chi Minh City 22:00; Auckland at 03:00 or 04:00
The slots rotate A, B, C, D through the year, so each office takes the night slot three times. O'Leary and Cummings (2007) identify temporal dispersion, how few working hours members share, as a distinct dimension of team dispersion with its own costs, and the rotation spreads those costs evenly rather than leaving them on the office furthest from headquarters.
A rotation does not make the night call pleasant; it makes it fair.
Holidays
Public holidays differ by country and remove shared hours without warning. The plan keeps a shared calendar of each office's 2026 public holidays, and weekly pair meetings that fall on a holiday in either office are moved to the next shared day rather than held with half the pair absent. Espinosa et al. (2007), studying distributed software teams, found that dispersion made coordination harder and that familiarity among members only partly offset it; holidays add an unplanned layer of that dispersion every year.
References
Espinosa, J. A., Slaughter, S. A., Kraut, R. E., & Herbsleb, J. D. (2007). Familiarity, complexity, and team performance in geographically distributed software development. Organization Science, 18(4), 613-630. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1070.0297
Hinds, P. J., & Bailey, D. E. (2003). Out of sight, out of sync: Understanding conflict in distributed teams. Organization Science, 14(6), 615-632. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.14.6.615.24872
O'Leary, M. B., & Cummings, J. N. (2007). The spatial, temporal, and configurational characteristics of geographic dispersion in teams. MIS Quarterly, 31(3), 433-452. https://doi.org/10.2307/25148802
MT262 Unit 4 instructions, in plain terms
Unit 4 asks students to plan how a team spread across time zones will meet and coordinate over a full year. Start with working-hour assumptions and each location's time zone rules, including daylight saving dates for the year in question. The prompt usually expects an overlap grid showing shared hours by pair, a calendar of clock changes and how each alters the overlaps, a schedule of recurring meetings placed in shared hours and a fair approach for any meeting that must include everyone. Address holidays as well. Compute times from published rules rather than memory, and note any pair with no shared hours and how it will coordinate. About five pages in APA 7, with three exhibits, is a common format.
How this MT262 Unit 4 example is built
The plan states its 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. assumption and each office's 2026 offsets, including Arizona's absence of daylight saving. The overlap grid gives shared hours for all six pairs, with the Friday problem for Phoenix and Auckland, under a margin note on live versus written relationships. The change calendar sets out the four 2026 dates and the shifting Lisbon and Auckland gap. Weekly pair meetings are placed in the middle of each overlap, and Hinds and Bailey explain why the Lisbon and Auckland pair gets a written process. The four all-hands slots are listed in UTC and local times with O'Leary and Cummings on temporal dispersion, and the highlighted line calls the rotation fair rather than pleasant. A holiday section closes it with Espinosa and colleagues.
Where the points sit in the MT262 Unit 4 rubric
Time zone plans are marked on accurate times, a complete overlap analysis, attention to daylight saving and fairness in shared burdens. Errors in offset or clock-change dates undermine the whole plan, so each should be computed from published rules. Instructors reward grids that show every pair, including those with no shared hours, and plans that explain how such pairs will coordinate. Placing recurring meetings inside real overlaps, with times shown in each location, shows practical skill. A rotation that spreads night calls evenly earns credit for fairness. Holidays, calendar handling on change dates and citations to research on temporal dispersion complete the rubric, and a clear set of exhibits makes the plan easy to check.
Common MT262 Unit 4 mistakes, and how to avoid them
The most common mistake is assuming offsets stay fixed all year, which breaks meetings on daylight saving dates. Another is forgetting that some locations, such as Arizona, do not change their clocks. Some plans schedule an all-hands at a time that is always convenient for headquarters and always the middle of the night for one office. Others miss the weekday problem, where one office's Friday is another's Saturday. Check the plan against holidays in each country. Send the locations and working hours of your team, and a writer can compute the overlaps, build the change calendar and draft a fair rotation.
Get an MT262 Unit 4 example written to your instructions
List every site in your Unit 4 scenario with its city, not just its time zone, since daylight saving rules differ within zones. Include team size, any fixed meetings and the rubric. The custom plan computes each hour, states who carries the night calls and how often, and arrives in 24-48h, free the first time. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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MT262 Unit 4 questions, answered
How do I get the times right across daylight saving changes?
Work from each city's actual rules rather than a time zone label, and list the dates clocks change in the year your plan covers. Remember that some places never change, such as Arizona and most of Asia, and that southern hemisphere changes run in the opposite season. A small table of offsets by date prevents most errors graders find.
Should the plan cover public holidays?
Ideally, yes. Holidays rarely coincide across countries, and a day off in one office can stall work passing through it. A list of each site's public holidays for the plan period, with the longest marked, such as the Lunar New Year break in Vietnam, lets the plan move deadlines in advance instead of discovering the gap when a handoff goes unanswered.
What if no hour works for everyone?
That is common on teams spanning more than about twelve hours, and it is a finding rather than a failure. Reduce what requires everyone at once, use pairs or subgroups that share hours, and move the rest to written channels. Where a full meeting remains necessary, say who carries the night hour, how often, and how that is tracked.
Where can I find a free MT262 Unit 4 sample paper?
Read the full MT262 Unit 4 time zone working plan here. It computes 2026 working-hour overlaps for offices in Arizona, Portugal, Vietnam and New Zealand, places weekly pair meetings and rotates a monthly all-hands.
How does the MT262 Unit 4 sample handle daylight saving time?
It lists the four 2026 change dates, when Lisbon and Auckland move their clocks, shows how each shifts the overlaps and has every invitation set in the organizer's local time so calendars adjust, with a check in each change week.