Team Performance: The Effect of Team Conscientiousness and Task Type

The purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between measures of conscientiousness at differing levels of analysis and team performance in the context of task type. It was hypothesized that a team referent measure of conscientiousness would have more predictive power than an aggregate of individual-level measures and that task type would moderate the relationship between team conscientiousness and overall team performance. Participants were 30 cockpit crews, made up of three pilots each. Both an individual-level and team referent measure of conscientiousness were administered to the pilots, and crew performance appraisal data were collected that separated performance into overall, additive, disjunctive, and conjunctive task types. Results indicated that the team referent measure of conscientiousness predicted overall team performance greater than did the individual-level measure. The results also partially supported the moderating effect of task type.