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We reviewed team coordination and implicit coordination theories and developed an explicit and implicit team coordination scale. After item revision of a preliminary scale had been performed by 5 experts, there were 30 items in 6 dimensions classified as explicit accountability, explicit predictability, explicit common understanding, implicit accountability, implicit predictability, and implicit common understanding. The reliability and validity of these items were determined with 323 participants, after which exploratory factor analysis resulted in 5 valid dimensions: explicit accountability, implicit accountability, explicit predictability, implicit predictability, and common understanding, comprising 26 items in the multidimensional scale. Future researchers can further explore the applicability of the scale for measuring team coordination in team management practices.
Keywords: explicit team coordination, implicit team coordination, team coordination, accountability, predictability, common understanding.
Team coordination has attracted attention from numerous researchers for many years (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006). Team coordination incorporates explicit and implicit coordination mechanisms and patterns (Rico, Sánchez-Manzanares, Gil, & Gibson, 2008; Wittenbaum, Stasser, & Merry, 1996). Explicit coordination refers to visible and external coordination patterns, many of which are generated in management institutions, under regulations, or through interventions by administrators. It involves adjustments realized through direct interaction among team members or with external agencies, including mutual communication, direct monitoring, standard operation procedures, or behavioral regulation plans, rules, and objectives (Blickensderfer, Reynolds, Salas, & Cannon-Bowers, 2010; Fisher et al., 2012).
In contrast, implicit coordination refers to adjustment behavior driven by deep cognition, that is, the adjustment by team members of their behavioral model according to their anticipated tasks and other team members' needs (Rico et al., 2008). Implicit coordination patterns usually operate imperceptibly; the coordination process among team members is hard to observe on the surface. Although contemporary researchers have begun to focus on implicit coordination, few have simultaneously investigated explicit and implicit coordination. For example, Fisher, Bell, Dierdorff, and Belohlav (2012) overlooked a simultaneous evaluation of explicit and implicit coordination and the provision of an empirical analysis, mainly evaluating implicit coordination only and stressing the predictability of implicit coordination. In addition, most previous researchers, such as Lewis (2003), have viewed team coordination as a single dimension.
Okhuysen and Bechky (2009) reviewed previous studies on team coordination and proposed three integrative dimensions of team coordination: accountability, predictability, and common understanding....