Team Climate Inventory (TCI)

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Submitted by National Center... on Oct 10, 2016 - 1:57pm CDT

Instrument
Authors: 
Anderson, N.R.
West, M.A.
Overview: 

The TCI was developed to measure team climate among management teams in healthcare organizations.  Based on a theoretical model, the tool measures four facets (vision, participative safety, task orientation, and support for innovation) in a 38-item self-report questionnaire.  Aggregated to the team level, the tool's results are intended to support team building and organizational development in healthcare teams.  The development of the TCI included pilot testing of a longer instrument (61 items) with 27 hospitals and 151 respondents; results demonstrated good internal consistency reliability and were reported predictive of several aspects of "innovativeness," as measured by a separate instrument.  A confirmatory factor analysis using the shorter version (38 items) of the TCI with a separate sample of 121 hospital teams and 971 respondents found a five-factor solution accounted for 96% of score variance. Although tested mostly in hospital-based settings in the UK, this instrument has been replicated by other groups and in other settings.

Link to Resources
Resource links: 

Anderson, N. & West, M.A. (1998). Measuring climate for work group innovation: Development and validation of the team climate inventory. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 19, 235-258.

West, M. A. & Anderson N. R. (1996). Innovation in top management teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 680-693.

Bosch, M., Dijkstra, R., Wensing, M., van der Weijden, T., and Grol, R. (2008).  Organizational culture, team climate and diabetes care in small office-based practices. BMC Health Services Research, 8, 180.

Descriptive Elements
Who is Being Assessed or Evaluated?: 
Teams
Instrument Type: 
Self-report (e.g., survey, questionnaire, self-rating)
Notes for Type: 

Mailed survey.

Source of Data: 
Health care providers, staff
Other
Notes for Data Sources: 

The tool is intended for use with healthcare management teams.  In the first several phases of the study, data from n=155 respondents from 27 hospital teams were used to conduct exploratory factor analyses, compute measures of internal consistency, and to support predictive validity analyses.  Participating teams ranged in size from 4-19 persons and included unit general managers, heads of nursing, accountants, personnel managers, and senior medical consultants.  In the latter phases of the study, data from n=971 respondents from an independent sample of 121 teams were used to execute confirmatory factor and discriminant analyses.  Organizations in this sample included 35 primary health care teams; 24 management teams in an international oil company, and 20 community psychiatric care teams.

Instrument Content: 
Reported perceptions, experiences of working relationships, teamwork
Organizational environment, culture
Notes for Content: 

The TCI assesses four climate factors predictive of innovation.  A fifth factor ("interaction frequency") was also suggested in both the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, but was not part of the original theoretical model.

  1. Vision
  2. Participative safety (further split into Participative safety and Interaction frequency)
  3. Task orientation 
  4. Support for innovation
Instrument Length: 

38 items; no time length specified.

Item Format: 
Three response formats are used depending on the item content. A 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from "strongly disagree" (1) to "strongly agree" (5) is used for agreement questions. A 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from "not at all" (1) to "completely" (7) is used for questions of degree. A 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from to "a very little extent" (1) to to "a very great extent" (7) is used for questions of extent.
Administration: 
In this study, senior management teams were contacted to participate in the study. A researcher visited the site and outlined the procedure. Managers were then sent the questionnaires to distribute, and individual team members were responsible for returning the questionnaires by mail.
Scoring: 
Scores for all team members are summed by section of the questionnaire. These sums are then divided by number of people on the team who complete a questionnaire.
Language: 
English (Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish translations of the TCI are available in the literature).
Norms: 
None described.
Access: 
Subscription (can be viewed in journal article)
Notes on Access: 

Contact the author to confirm permission to use.

Psychometric Elements: Evidence of Validity
Content: 
The content was based on extensive theoretical deconstruction of "generalized climate" and its relationship to "innovativeness," as revealed through shared perceptions of team members. "Team" was defined as permanent or semi-permanent, proximal working groups with common goals and sufficient frequency of interaction and task inter-dependency to predispose its members to collective action. The authors used existing measures identified from a literature review, but most of the items were new.
Response Process: 
The 61-item (long version) of the TCI was piloted on 16 teams of nurse or hospital management personnel. Participants in the pilot gave reactions on the item content and determined that the content was acceptable for measuring team climate and innovation. The response rate was 63.7%.
Internal Structure: 
Factor analysis of the long (61 item) version revealed a 5-factor model which supported the four primary factors in the theoretical model, but split "participative safety" into two factors: "participative safety" and "interaction frequency." The final solution accounted for 61.7% of the total variance. Cronbach’s alpha reliability was good for all five factors (i.e., alpha = 0.84-0.94). A confirmatory factor analysis of the shorter (38 item) version also supported the 5-factor solution; it accounted for 96% of score variance -- a very high (positive) result. Results of the five-factor solution produced good fit, chi-square/degrees of freedom = 1.96; Tucker Lewis Index (TLI) = 0.96; Normed Noncentrality Fit Index (CFI) = 0.96; Parsimonious Normed-Fit Index (PNFI) = 0.82. Within team consistency was within acceptable levels (i.e., within-group inter-rater agreement = 0.67-0.98) for 24 of 25 teams. Between team differences were within acceptable levels (i.e., F ratio greater than 1) with only one exception.
Relation to Other Variables: 
The TCI was administered within a larger, longitudinal study, which included separate reports of "innovativeness" for the 27 management teams participating in the TCI study. These reports of innovations were scored for various features (e.g., overall, number of innovations, magnitude) and used as a separate measure to confirm predictive validity of the TCI. Combined team scores were used in these analyses. "Support for innovation" from the TCI significantly predicted "overall innovation" and "innovation novelty." "Participative safety" significantly predicted the number of innovations and team self-reports of innovativeness. "Task orientation" significantly predicted administrative effectiveness. West and Anderson (1996) presents a detailed report of these findings.
Consequential: 
None described.
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