Linking employee perceptions of collective efficacy in self-managing service teams with customer-perceived service quality : a psychometric assessment

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linkage between self‐managing team (SMT) member perceptions of collective efficacy and customer‐perceived service quality, and the most cost‐efficient way to reliably assess collective efficacy and customer‐perceived service quality, using generalizability theory (G‐theory).Design/methodology/approach – Longitudinal design; employee and customer survey data from 52 teams of a major financial services institution were collected at two points in time.Findings – First of all, results of OLS regression analysis show a positive effect of collective efficacy on customer‐perceived service quality. In addition, taking a G‐theory approach, the results indicate that collective efficacy possesses a higher psychometric quality than customer‐perceived service quality and that the costs of reliably comparing SMTs on collective efficacy are considerably lower compared to customer‐perceived service quality. Finally, for both constructs, the results reveal subtle b...