The Team Descriptive Index (TDI): A Multidimensional Scaling Approach for Team Description

The literature on teams is filled with many alternative team type taxonomies, and the persistence of so many conflicting taxonomies serves as evidence for the lack of consensus in the field about how to describe and differentiate teams in any standardized way. This paper presents the Team Descriptive Index (TDI) as an approach for rigorous team description based upon the Three-Dimensional Team Scaling Model (3DTSM) developed by Hollenbeck, Beersma, and Schouten (Academy of Management Review, 37, 92–106). The use of a continuous scaling approach to team description eliminates the need for researchers to force the teams they study into discrete categorical types that, more often than not, fail accurately to capture their nature in a precise way. We report the results of five different studies that provide construct validation evidence for a set of standardized measures for the 3DTSM with diverse samples that reflect the wide variety of contexts in which teams are studied.