The Effect of General Cognitive Ability, Teamwork KSA's, and The "Big Five" Personality Factors on the Performance of Engineering Design Teams: Implications for the Selection of Teams

Abstract

<p>General cognitive ability, Teamwork KSA's, and the "Big Five" personality factors (Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Openness to Experience) were examined as potential selection measures for three-person Engineering design teams. This study used objective product evaluations as the performance criteria for the teams rather than measures of satisfaction and self-reported performance which had been used as proxies for performance in past studies. Self-reports of satisfaction and performance were measured in order to test the validity of using these measures as proxies for objective performance.</p> <p>In the short period of time over which this study took place, it was apparent that some teams were able to perform at a minimally acceptable level, and some were not. Successful teams were characterized by higher composite levels of general cognitive ability, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Teamwork KSA scores than their unsuccessful counterparts. However, from a selection standpoint, only general cognitive ability and Neuroticism provided unique variance in differentiating successful from unsuccessful teams. The heterogeneity of Conscientiousness was negatively related to the performance of successful teams.</p> <p>Team member self-reports of satisfaction and performance were moderately related to the team's product performance, although the relationships were not sufficiently large to suggest that a proxy relationship exists.</p>