A theory and taxonomy of individual team member performance

The purpose of this research was to specify and describe the latent structure of individual team member performance. In this research, individual team member performance was defined as the behaviors team members exhibit that are relevant to team goals, and that are within their control.; First, an a priori taxonomy of individual team member performance was distilled from existing research literature in the areas of individual performance, leadership, and group and team functioning and effectiveness. The a priori taxonomy consists of seven dimensions. Then critical incidents were collected from 93 team members, who represented four different organizations: a consumer foods company, an engineering consulting firm, a hospital, and a survey research organization. After edits were made, there were a total of 640 critical incidents. Eight subject matter judges assigned a stratified random sample of 200 incidents to the a priori dimensions. The sorting assignments were used to evaluate the sufficiency, appropriateness, reliability, and distinctiveness of the a priori dimensions. Next, 20 new judges sorted the same set of critical incidents, but into dimensions they created, ones they thought represented the underlying performance categories of the critical incidents. A 200 x 200 agreement matrix was tabulated and analyzed using principal components analysis. This was done to reduce the sorting data to a manageable and interpretable set of components. The results based on the a priori taxonomy and the empirically-derived taxonomy (i.e., the inductive and deductive approaches) were reconciled through systematic content analysis, and a revised taxonomy was constructed. A final set of eight judges assigned a new sample of 200 critical incidents to the revised dimensions.; Results showed that the revised taxonomy dimensions were more sufficient appropriate, reliable, and distinct than the a priori taxonomy dimensions. It was concluded that individual team member performance can be described sufficiently and appropriately by the nine revised dimensions. The dimensions are (a) Peer Leadership: Initiating Structure, (b) Team Workload Distribution/Coordination, (c) Fulfilling Team-related Task Responsibilities, (d) Situation Awareness, (e) Team-relevant Problem Solving, (f) Monitoring Performance, (g) Training Team Members/Sharing Task Information, (h) Team Member Helping/Backup Relief, and (i) Peer Leadership: Consideration.