Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Isomorphism in Measures of Team Constructs

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Clayton, E. (2022). Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Isomorphism in Measures of Team Constructs. Unc Charlotte Electronic Theses And Dissertations.
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Abstract

Work teams are an ever-growing structure as organizations seek to become more agile and achieve better outcomes (Bersin, 2016; Deloitte, 2018). Therefore, organizational researchers seek to accurately recognize and understand various aspects of team dynamics, which are often measured by capturing team-member perceptions. When these perceptions are shared among team members, team consensus constructs (e.g., team cohesion, conflict, psychological safety, satisfaction, task interdependence, liking, and viability) shed light on team functioning and performance. Researchers typically assess the psychometric properties of these measures at the individual level (e.g. factor analysis, covariance/variance matrices) without examining if the strength of and relationship among measures’ indicators vary at the between-team level where the constructs theoretically operate (Carless & De Paola, 2000; Edmondson, 1999; Jehn & Mannix, 2001; Van der Vegt et al., 2001). This misalignment between theory and measurement brings into question the quality of measures of team consensus constructs and the theoretical development based on the research associated with them. I examined the extent to which this misalignment is problematic and potential reasons for cross-level measurement and structural variance in and among measures. I used archival data to examine over 3,000 project-based teams using R and MPlus assessing measures in a multilevel factor analytic framework and examined for cross-level measurement and structural variance. The results demonstrated measurement quality should be assessed at the theoretically relevant level of analysis, the degree of psychometric isomorphism is in part a feature of within-team agreement and the wording of the measure, and there are consequences of misalignment regarding convergent and discriminant validity. Future research needs to address the need for discriminant validity among some measures and the potential for construct proliferation.

Details
Author

Clayton, Elizabeth

Title

Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts: Isomorphism in Measures of Team Constructs

Physical Description

1 online resource (177 pages) : PDF

Date

2022

Degree Granting Institution

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Abstract

Work teams are an ever-growing structure as organizations seek to become more agile and achieve better outcomes (Bersin, 2016; Deloitte, 2018). Therefore, organizational researchers seek to accurately recognize and understand various aspects of team dynamics, which are often measured by capturing team-member perceptions. When these perceptions are shared among team members, team consensus constructs (e.g., team cohesion, conflict, psychological safety, satisfaction, task interdependence, liking, and viability) shed light on team functioning and performance. Researchers typically assess the psychometric properties of these measures at the individual level (e.g. factor analysis, covariance/variance matrices) without examining if the strength of and relationship among measures’ indicators vary at the between-team level where the constructs theoretically operate (Carless & De Paola, 2000; Edmondson, 1999; Jehn & Mannix, 2001; Van der Vegt et al., 2001). This misalignment between theory and measurement brings into question the quality of measures of team consensus constructs and the theoretical development based on the research associated with them. I examined the extent to which this misalignment is problematic and potential reasons for cross-level measurement and structural variance in and among measures. I used archival data to examine over 3,000 project-based teams using R and MPlus assessing measures in a multilevel factor analytic framework and examined for cross-level measurement and structural variance. The results demonstrated measurement quality should be assessed at the theoretically relevant level of analysis, the degree of psychometric isomorphism is in part a feature of within-team agreement and the wording of the measure, and there are consequences of misalignment regarding convergent and discriminant validity. Future research needs to address the need for discriminant validity among some measures and the potential for construct proliferation.

Genre

doctoral dissertations

Subjects--Topics

Statistics
Organizational behavior

Degree

Ph.D.

Keywords

Multilevel Factor Analysis
Team Cohesion
Team Conflict
Team Psychological Safety
Team Task Interdependence
Teams

Subject Area

Organizational Science

Advisor(s)

Woehr, David

Committee Members

Tonidandel, Scott
Heggestad, Eric
Gooty, Janaki

Degree Note

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2022.

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Rights Holder Information

Copyright is held by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Identifier

Clayton_uncc_0694D_13050

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:2649