The Effects of Group Personality Composition on Project Team Performance: Operationalizations and Outcomes

Teams are used to achieve organizational goals and objectives, and their success has led to a broad increase in their use in businesses, non-profits and NGO’s. Extant research suggests that group personality composition is related to team performance (Barry and Stewart, 1996; Halfhill, Nielsen, Sundstrom, and Weilbaecher, 2005; Peeters, Rutte, Tuijl, and Reymen, 2006; Bell, 2007). Project teams are frequently used in the business world and undertake a wide variety of tasks (Hackman, 1990). This paper investigates the relationship between the group personality composition of project teams and team performance. The study context is project teams involved in a semester-long business simulation in an undergraduate core capstone course at a large R-1 public university. Hierarchical regression is used to first remove any effect stemming from variables that are not of direct interest, such as team size and course section. The study’s nine hypotheses are then tested using the collected data. The research results are discussed in detail. Contributions to both research and practice are considered, as well as the study’s limitations. A continued stream of research is envisioned and detailed, followed by the study’s conclusions.