Team Cohesion: Advances in Psychological Theory, Methods and Practice by Eduardo Salas William B. Vessey Armando X. Estrada

Author:Eduardo Salas,William B. Vessey,Armando X. Estrada
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785602832
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Published: 2015-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

Keywords: Cohesion; team; measurement

Today, effective organizations require effective teams (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006). A strong understanding of team dynamics has become critical for success – without it, team goals are less likely to be met, which can have far reaching consequences beyond just the immediate team. Previous research has thus devoted much attention to the study of teams. One variable that has been identified as particularly crucial is team cohesion (e.g., Dion, 2000), a shared bonding or attraction that’s driven by the task and social features of a team and that causes members to remain together (Casey-Campbell & Martens, 2009). A strong sense of cohesion may improve interactions among team members by resulting in greater participation, task and role acceptance, and increased goal accomplishment, among other things, ultimately facilitating team effectiveness (Casey-Campbell & Martens, 2009). There is little disagreement among scholars that cohesion is a critical aspect of team functioning.

Disagreement does arise, however, when attempting to establish a method of measuring cohesion. To date, the literature lacks a consistent conceptualization of cohesion, and in turn, a clear, agreed upon approach to measuring it. Thus, while, researchers recognize the importance of team cohesion, and practitioners seek to enhance it, without consistency in these two important areas, progress in this domain is severely hindered. Having numerous definitions and methods of measuring cohesion hurts the ability both to reproduce and compare study results and to diagnose and monitor cohesion in organizational settings. Researcher-based guidance about how cohesion can be measured consistently and effectively is needed in order to advance science and, ultimately, to successfully enhance other team variables of interest (e.g., performance, viability). The purpose of this chapter is thus to utilize current literature to develop a clearer picture of how team cohesion can be defined and measured in optimal manners.

This chapter will review what matters for effective cohesion measurement (who, what, when, where, why, and how), issues and solutions pertaining to measurement, and directions for future research involving various innovative approaches that can be used to enhance the measurement process. We examine the “who” of cohesion measurement, which involves whether interest lies in measuring the individuals or the team as a whole; the “what” pertains to the type of cohesion (e.g., task, social) being captured through the measure; the “where” concerns the context in which cohesion measurement is taking place; the “when” component refers to the timing of the measurement in relation to frequency and team development; the “why” relates to how researchers are connecting cohesion to other variables of interest – we explore constructs that are most frequently related to team cohesion according to past research; finally, the “how” considers the measures themselves that should be used to capture and analyze team cohesion data.

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