Validation of the Team Factors Inventory in Brazilian Companies

The aim of this paper is to test the validity and reliability of a Portuguese version of the Team Factors Inventory/TFI derived from the Creative Leadership Model. This inventory measures the propensity of a team towards creative leadership and consists of a paper and pen measure with 37 items on a Likert-type scale. The literature concerning creativity in organizational studies has focused mainly on the contribution the individual makes to innovation and technical change. The model of Creative Leadership, on the other hand, has turned attention to group behaviour and team management. The model has been recently proposed in England and there are no literature reports on its application in a language other than English. The method involved a review of the literature on creative leadership, backtranslation of the inventory, and data analysis through descriptive statistics, hypotheses testing, factor analysis, and analysis of variance, using as control variables, sex, and type of enterprise. The sample consisted of 115 respondents, with 73 owner-managers of high-tech incubated firms and 42 owner-managers of service firms. Analyses indicated that the translated version Portuguese of the inventory reached satisfactory levels of validity and reliability. This means that the TFI may be applied in a cultural context other than the original.