Following the exploratory qualitative phase, where ethnography and observation were first used to explore the contextual setting, and in-depth interviews with some of the projects gave rise to an understanding of the context and factors affecting performance and innovation progress. Resulting data was able to inform the adaptation of existing organizational team measures to suit the context of interorganizational teams. Particular measures were prioritised and the contextual knowledge informed the development of a survey (Appendix 1). Below is a short explanation of each original scale used and some examples of items which needed to be
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adapted. The questionnaire itself and a breakdown of adaptation to scales that were made can be found in the Appendix 1.
5.2.i Measures
Part I: Project Plans and Structure
This part of the questionnaire was designed to obtain information about how the team is organized, set up and run. The team ‘lead’ was liaised with in order to obtain an objective or short goal related statement for the project. The individual was then required to indicate their agreement and invited to add to this if they felt that more information was left out of the statement. The individual was then presented with questions about how many core team members there were and the allegiance of these members. The length of time that the individual has been involved in the project, and the length of time the individual believed the project had been running was collected. Information about the regularity of meetings, how many attend these meetings and the methods of communication were also collected from the individual respondent. By collecting this information from each member, it would allow some measures of agreement to be calculated and also to compare between those involved in the project and belonging to different organizations.
Part II: About the Project Working Group
a) Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS) (Wageman, Hackman & Lehman, 2005). This measures the extent that a team is ‘real’ and traditionally has measures assessing whether the team has a compelling direction, has a facilitating structure, has a supportive organizational context and whether there is opportunity for support and coaching as well as measures for boundedness, stability and interdependence. This forms the basis of antecedent condition measurement. Following the preliminary exploration stage of the research it emerged that the ‘real’ team measures would provide interesting insight into the interorganizational team context, and while space was tight on the questionnaire; boundedness, stability and interdependence would be most important in identifying this
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interorganizational ‘team’ as a team or as an entirely different structure. The wording of the items was adapted slightly (see Appendix 1 for details) in order to apply to the context with appropriate and neutral wording. The boundedness and interdependence scales had three items each, while the stability scale had two items. Each statement item was required to be assessed in terms of accuracy in relation to the project working group. There was a 5 point Likert scale provided in order to indicate individual feelings of the accuracy of the statement items with 1= “highly inaccurate” and 5 = “highly accurate”.
b) Leadership Clarity (West, Borrill et al., 2002) allowed the individual to select from five options which statement about the clarity of the team leadership was most relevant to their project working team. This was a key factor in identifying intraorganizational teams and is often considered to be a control variable (Richardson, 2012) in team research.
c) Team Psychological Safety is measured using Edmondson’s Psychological Safety Scale (1999). This scale has a published Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.82 which indicates that it is reliable and the correlations between each item indicate that it is valid. This scale needed limited adaptation as it applies to beliefs about the team that respondents are participating in, rather than about the task. There are seven items relating to psychological safety and the statement items required a response to be selected in terms of accuracy along a seven point Likert scale where 1= “very inaccurate”, 4 = “neutral” and 7 = “Very accurate”.
d) Intrinsic Motivation (adapted from Amabile, 1985; Tierney, Farmer & Graen, 1999; Zhang & Bartol, 2010) was measured using three items (previously published Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.82). A 5-point Likert scale was used in order to obtain the participant’s agreement with the statement items.
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e) Creativity (Zhang & Bartol, 2010; adapted from Zhou & George, 2001) was measured with respondents answering the extent to which the statement items were characteristic of the project team using a 5-point Likert Scale where 1 = “Not at all characteristic”, 3= “neutral” and 5 = “Very characteristic”.
f) Individual Team Satisfaction (Van der Vegt, Emans & Van de Vliert, 2000) was measured using two items which were regarding their satisfaction with their colleagues and with working in the team. Items were rated along a 5-point Likert Scale where 1 = “Strongly disagree” and 5 = “Strongly Agree”. The previously published Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.75.
Part III: Current Progress
Innovation & Performance was measured using some initial items intended to gauge the progress on the team and the project specifically. These were influenced by the preliminary exploration phase and some measures which were available and published but not wholly appropriate for the particular context of this research.
The alliance performance data was obtained using the measure of alliance performance published by Robson, Katsikeas & Bello (2008). This explores the alliance performance using three previously published subscales: effectiveness of the alliance (3items; Fisher et al., 1997) the efficiency (3items; Majumdar, 1998; Sarkar et al., 2001) and the responsiveness (4 items; Ayers et al., 1997) using a seven-point Likert scale with anchors requiring a response of agreement where 1= “strongly disagree” and 7 = “strongly agree”.
An estimated date of completion was requested and an indication of the current state of the project was also requested. This included four options relating to the completion state and also in relation to expectations and understanding of the overall outcomes.
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Respondents were all asked to indicate their gender, the type of organization that they belong to, the length of time they have worked for that organization, their incumbent role at the organization and their ethnic origin. This information was collected in order to not only give some idea of the diversity of the organization but also to see if understanding of the sector and/or experience had an effect on team performance.
4.2.ii Construct Validity
A Cronbach’s Alpha was performed on each of the scales that have been developed or adapted to this research. This was important in order to ascertain whether the scales have proven fit for purpose.
Table 3: Cronbach's Alpha Scores for each scale (Validity considered >0.75)
Scale Cronbach’s α Notes
Team Diagnostic Survey 0.893 Acceptable
Psychological Safety 0.937 Acceptable
Intrinsic Motivation 0.876 Acceptable
Creativity 0.966 Acceptable
Individual Team Satisfaction 0.789 Acceptable
Progress 0.962 Acceptable
Alliance Performance 0.966 Acceptable
The table indicates that all scales had acceptable construct validity, indicating they were measuring the intended construct. This indicates that both the method of adaptation of the scale to suit the context has been appropriate, but also that the construct is being measured appropriately within the context it has been translated to.
4.2.iii Correlation Analysis
Generally statisticians recommend using as many ways to explore the data as possible. In deciding which test to use, several opinions were sought. While it is important to explore the data with as many tools as possible, it is also important that these tools are applied within their recommended parameters.
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Given that the scales feature small numbers of items it is important to ensure that nothing has been missed by utilising only the Pearson’s correlation analysis. Moreover it is advised that Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients can be over-interpreted. Hauke & Kossowski (2011) warn that researchers using Spearman’s rank should be careful not to over exaggerate the significance and strength of a relationship between the two variables. There has been some argument as to whether psychological construct scales utilising the Likert-style scale can, when items are collated, be considered to provide interval data (Stevens, 1946). However, it is an accepted practice to use the Pearson’s correlation analysis in quantitative survey based research (Stevens, 1946).
The Pearson’s correlation is a test on interval data which measures the association between two continuous variables. Whereas the Spearman’s Rank Correlation Analysis acts in a similar manner to Pearson’s, it is however, considered to be a ranked based version that can be used on interval and ordinal data (Chok, 2010). Generally guidelines suggest that selection should be made based on the type of data being analysed and for this reason when dealing with interval data Pearson’s is considered to be the most powerful test of association (Chok, 2010).
However, the test parameters require that Pearson’s correlation be applied to normally distributed data, and Spearman’s rank analysis to data that isn’t normally distributed (Norman, 2010; Bishara & Hittner, 2012). A test of the distribution of the data was carried out and this output revealed that only the creativity scale data was normally distributed. Given the strength of support for Pearson’s correlation, both Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation were performed and the correlation matrices can be found in Appendix 4. Where significant correlations are shared, the Spearman’s rank provides a stronger coefficient, however it is important not to over-interpret these results as signifying a relationship between the two variables (Hauke & Kossowski, 2011).
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The two correlation tests were carried out and do share many similar patterns in the data upon comparison. The Pearson’s Correlation is presented in Chapter Eight and is used for all references to correlation relationships throughout unless expressly specified, due to the adequate sample size, the power of the Pearson’s Correlation and the generally accepted
practice to use this correlation in this type of data analysis.