The Team Climate Inventory (TCI)—four or five factors? Testing the structure of TCI in samples of low and high complexity jobs

Abstract

Two alternative versions of the Team Climate Inventory (TCI; Anderson & West, 1994), consisting of either four or five factors, have been introduced by innovation researchers. This study compared the psychometric properties of these two versions by using data obtained from a Finnish sample of 2 265 local government employees. Exploratory factor analysis of the entire sample reproduced both the four‐ and five‐factor versions with good internal consistencies. When a distinction was made between samples with low and high job complexity, significant differences between the four‐ and five‐factor versions emerged. Exploratory factor analysis of the sample with low job complexity suggested that both factor versions obtained clear and interpretable structures. However, only the five‐factor version obtained a clear factor structure in the sample of high job complexity. Further LISREL confirmatory factor analyses of both samples suggested that the five‐factor structure provided significantly better fit to the data than the four‐factor version. In conclusion, the five‐factor version of the TCI, including subscales of vision, participative safety, task orientation, support for innovation and interaction frequency, is preferred to the four‐factor version because it is more structurally intact and less likely to be affected by job complexity.