Impact of team design and technical factors on team cohesion

Abstract

Purpose Based on the interpersonal interaction perspective of team cohesion, this study aims to examine the effects of team boundedness, formal coordination and organization tenure diversity on both task and social cohesion. The authors test for the interaction effect of organization tenure diversity on the relationships between the independent variables and the dimensions of team cohesion. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected from 111 software development teams and aggregated to the team level. Common latent factor test for common method bias showed no significant bias. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test all the hypotheses. Findings SEM results show that team boundedness and formal coordination have positive and significant association with both dimensions of team cohesion. Formal coordination was found to be a stronger positive predictor for task cohesion than for social cohesion. Organization tenure diversity was found to be a stronger negative predictor for social cohesion than for task cohesion. Organization tenure diversity in the team moderates the relationship between formal coordination and task cohesion. Research limitations/implications The data was collected using a cross-sectional design. However, the authors have mitigated the effect of common method variance by adopting both procedural and statistical methods. Originality/value This paper expands extant literature by examining the antecedents of two important components of team cohesion, task and social cohesion. The authors proposed and found that the independent variables have different impacts on task and social cohesion. This study furthers both theory and practice by considering team boundedness as a variable of interest and its impact on internal team dynamics.