The effects of collaboration on performance: a multilevel validation in project teams

Project teams are essential to organisations. Team processes - how team members manage interdependencies across time to achieve a common goal - are sensitive to changes organisations must orchestrate to adapt their functioning to technological changes, industry requirements, and market pressures. Using two samples and different work configurations, we present individual-level, team-level, and cross-level construct and predictive validity evidence regarding an instrument measuring an essential project team process: collaborative work. Consistent with theory, confirmatory factor analysis yielded a 2nd order factor structure composed of teamwork communication, synchronicity, explicit coordination, and implicit coordination. At the individual level, collaborative work is predictive of contextual and task performance. Hierarchical linear modelling revealed that aggregates indicative of team-level collaboration - team average and consensus - explain individual-level performance after controlling for individuals' collaborative behaviours. At the team level, both aggregates predict team outcome performance. Our interpretation of the current study's validity evidence casts the collaborative work questionnaire as a short self-report instrument useful across contexts. Its use could contribute to theory development by distinguishing between team processes as mediators affecting input-performance relations. In practical terms, averages and consensual information could help researchers and practitioners choose appropriate combinations of individual- and team-level solutions for improvement.