| Given the increased use of teams in organizations, better understanding of how the composition of teams affects team processes and team performance is critical. Existing team research has focused primarily on the linkages between team processes and team performance with little attention devoted to understanding the effects of team composition on team effectiveness. The purpose of this research is to address this void in the literature by examining how individual characteristics in the aggregate—team cognitive ability and team personality—affect the development of five process variables and subsequent team performance. Consistent with prior research, I examined both the mean level and variance of each of the composition variables. However, the mean and variance models of aggregation assume, implicitly, that team members each contribute equally to team composition. This might not be the case in real teams. Hence, as my second objective, I proposed an alternate conceptualization and operationalization of team composition variables. Specifically, I proposed to take into account the relative influence of each team member, operationalized as the individual's advice network centrality, and compared this alternate conceptualization (i.e., the centrality model) to the traditional model of aggregation.; I collected data from 50 combat teams from the Singapore Armed Forces. Besides individual personality and advice network data, I also collected independent observer ratings of team performance on these teams. In general, results showed that team personality indices of team composition based on the centrality model had more significant relationships with the process variables and team performance than team personality indices based on traditional aggregation models. However, the predictive power of the centrality model for team cognitive ability over the mean model was less apparent. Implications and future directions are discussed. |
