CHIC Scale

How Does the Physical Environment Affect Collaboration?

Many organizations have designed physical spaces to facilitate collaboration⁵. These spaces are based on the idea that the physical nearness of employees to each other enables collaboration across types of interpersonal boundaries by encouraging cooperative interactions and “chance encounters”⁶. Unfortunately, the expected gains of collaboration often fail to emerge⁵. Studies show that some spaces designed to be collaborative can have the opposite effect. Instead, some of these spaces have been known to spark disputes, foster territorial behaviors, and weaken collegiality⁷. Sadly, collaborative spaces that promote collaboration may drive employees to avoid new collaborators⁷.

Boundries

One study found that employees, who worked in a space designed for collaboration, avoided new collaborators by concentrating on current projects, emphasizing “group boundaries," creating policies to protect the status quo, and diminishing interpersonal interactions⁷. These tactics permit employees to evade cultivating new collaborations⁷. While it is difficult to say what the perfect space for collaboration looks like, it is possible to know if one has access to a space that facilitates true collaboration. Considering the potential impact that a suitable space has on collaboration and the practice of collaborative leadership, it is necessary to account for its presence.

Silos

It has been observed that teams are unique bodies linked with others and the organization itself^1,2. Therefore, it is not surprising that team collaboration crosses boundaries rarely observed in organizations where employees operate in silos³. In healthcare, silos are obstacles to creating trust and functional synthesis⁴.

To practice interprofessional collaboration, there must be professional representation from at least two different healthcare disciplines. There may be the capacity and desire to collaborate in many cases, but it cannot occur without the opportunity.

Environment

This section acknowledges that collaboration is a function of the environment as it is the people who contribute to it. The factor regarding the environment refers to the various characteristics of the resource that mediates people's ability to practice collaborative leadership.

• 10. I have access to suitable resources to practice collaboration.
• 11. I have suitable digital access to other disciplines with whom to practice collaboration.
• 12. I have access to a suitable space in which to collaborate.
• 13. Scheduling times to collaborate with professionals from other disciplines is easy.

Sub-Scale Validation

The 21 questions of the CHIC Scale has been validated as a reliable psychometric instrument. Questions 10-13 of the CHIC Scale has also been validated as a separate stand-alone tool to evaluate how well a person’s current environment facilitates interprofessional collaboration. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) calculated these four questions with a Cronbach’s Alpha of .784 for a sample size of 558. Information for scoring the instrument and each sub-scale is provided here.

The CHIC Scale is a copyrighted instrument that is free for public use.