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Cohesion in virtual teams: validating the perceived cohesion scale in a distributed setting

Published: 19 September 2006 Publication History

Abstract

With the advent of new technology-enabled organizational forms, firms are increasingly relying on virtual teams to accomplish organizational objectives. For those studying these environments, sound measurement of work team phenomena, such as group cohesion, is the key to understanding the impact of these new technologies on team processes and performance. Bollen and Hoyle (1990) created a six-item Perceived Cohesion Scale (PCS) to measure cohesion in groups and employed a study of large groups to assess the psychometric qualities of their scale. Chin et al. (1999) validated the PCS measure using a study of small groups that were collocated. The present effort extends the Chin et al. (1999) adaptation of Bollen and Hoyle's PCS scale to virtual teams and attempts to validate it in this setting. Our findings indicate support for the validity, reliability and factorial stability of the measure in this virtual team context.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems
ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems  Volume 37, Issue 2-3
Spring-Summer 2006
178 pages
ISSN:0095-0033
EISSN:1532-0936
DOI:10.1145/1161345
Issue’s Table of Contents

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 19 September 2006
Published in SIGMIS Volume 37, Issue 2-3

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Author Tags

  1. cohesion
  2. computer-supported collaborative work
  3. confirmatory factor analysis
  4. evaluation/methodology
  5. groupware
  6. measurement invariance
  7. scale validation
  8. sociology
  9. structural equation modeling
  10. virtual teams
  11. web-based interaction

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