Effects of team member psychological proximity on teamwork performance

The aim of this paper is to examine whether team-members' psychological proximity affects the degree of teamwork quality and therefore affecting the team performance.

A survey instrument was developed based on extant literature reviews, and administered among information technology professionals. Collected data were analysed using partial least square (PLS) method.

Team-members' psychological proximity is found to be significantly related to teamwork quality. The magnitude of relational coefficients between sub-dimensions of psychological proximity and those of teamwork quality turned out to be different from each other.

Psychological proximity is found to critically influence teamwork and performance in IT teams. Also, the four-factor model developed from previous literature is validated for further use. Snowball sampling using IT professionals is the major limitation of this study.

Studies on teamwork quality that employs psychological proximity are scarce. Socialising in workplaces is sometimes viewed as an unproductive activity, however, socialising decreases psychological proximity among team-members, increasing teamwork quality. In addition, examining the psychological proximity in team-members adds to the growing literature on teamwork quality.