An Empirical Study On The Team Climate For Innovation And Job Involvement In Software Development Team

Team heterogeneity refers to the differences and dissimilarities among members of group in age, gender, education levels, team tenure, characters or values. The definition of climate for innovation is individual's perceptions of the work environment that can influence its innovation abilities. Job involvement is defined as the extent to which a person identifies psychologically with his or her work. Through detailed review on related literatures, Team Climate Inventory and Job Involvement Scale were used as powerful instruments to examine the relationship between team heterogeneity, team climate for innovation and job involvement in project teams of software companies.The study was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, the purpose of research was to construct Team Climate Inventory in China, based on item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability test and validity test. In the second phase, a sample of 109 individuals from 22 teams provided data for the Correlation Analysis, Regression Analysis and One-Way ANOVA of this measure.The results reveal that:1. Four-factor structure of team climate for innovation consists of vision, participative safety, task orientation and support for innovation.2. Gender heterogeneity and age heterogeneity are positively related to vision, participative safety, task orientation and support for innovation. And they also significantly influence team climate for innovation.3. Team climate for innovation is positively related to job involvement, and is also a predictor of job involvement. Support for innovation and task orientation significantly influence job pleasure; support for innovation, vision and participative safety significantly influence job dedication.4. Perceptions of team climate for innovation by members discriminate significantly under different team size. Members in the team for above 7 persons have higher perceptions of the factor of support for innovation; members in the team for 4-6 persons have higher perceptions of the factor of vision and participative safety.