1.1 Why measure teamwork?

Organizations (both work and non-work) are increasingly using teams to streamline processes, enhance participation, and improve quality (Cohen and Bailey, 1997). Hence, teams are becoming the primary building block of most organizations (Brooks, 1993; McGrath, 1997). In fact, a recent study by Gordon (1992) found that 82% of U.S. companies with 100 or more employees utilize some form of teams. Teams are found in such diverse fields as education, religion, science, manufacturing, and consulting.

Because teams span both private and public life, individuals must be able to work and perform in a team context to function effectively in today's society. Both the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS; U.S. Department of Labor, 1991, 1992a, 1992b) and the Conference Board of Canada Employability Skills Profile (1993) cite the importance of interpersonal skills (or teamwork) in work and everyday life.

Due to its prevalence in society, teamwork has been identified as an important life skill. Consistent with the goals of ALL, the teamwork measure should provide information as to how teamwork skills are distributed in the adult population internationally. Information on the nature of teamwork skills associated with a particular nation and the social and economic factors that influence the development of teamwork skills are of particular interest. This information should prove valuable to employers and educators who wish to improve teamwork in the workforce and elsewhere.

1.2 Challenges of the project

Although there is little doubt that teamwork is an important life skill, the measurement of teamwork in ALL presents specific challenges. First, ALL will be the initial attempt to provide a large-scale international assessment of teamwork skills. As a result, a limited number of methods and approaches exist as precedents. Past international assessments have focused on adult literacy (i.e., see IALS) as opposed to interpersonal skills like teamwork. Therefore, we expect to learn a great deal about teamwork skills and their distribution in the adult population across nations.

Second, unlike other life skills measured by ALL, teamwork will likely be affected by culture. Although we believe that a certain set of core skills defines teamwork across all cultures, the way in which these skills are manifested within a team is likely to vary. Therefore, we will not attempt to develop an invariant set of items to be translated for use in each nation. Rather, items should be modified as necessary to take known cultural differences into account.

Finally, and perhaps most challenging, is the fact that most methods of assessing teamwork skills require direct observation of team performance (D. Baker and Salas, 1992; 1997; Brannick, Prince and Salas, 1997; Ilgen, 1999). Typically, team members are placed in a scenario. Experts observe team behaviors and provide performance ratings on specific teamwork skills. This measurement approach differs substantially from the approach to be used in ALL. Here, the teamwork measure will be a short paper-based instrument; no opportunity for directly observing the teamwork skills of the respondent will be available. Thus, respondents' teamwork skills will have to be assessed indirectly instead of directly. For ALL, we propose to measure the knowledge of teamwork skills, attitude towards teamwork, and past experience in teams and then attempt to draw links between these variables and team performance.

With these challenges in mind, we turn to a discussion of the key components of teamwork underlying our framework. Because these domains will drive development of the teamwork measures for ALL, we draw heavily from the literature on teams and on what is currently known about teamwork.