Examining measurement invariance of a managerial coaching scale across traditional and virtual employee groups: implications for expanding managerial coaching research

Managers and human resource development (HRD) professionals are increasingly interacting with employees who work remotely and on-site at the office. These workers also span across multiple generations, each of which is unique in their needs for growth, learning, development, performance improvement, and fulfiling their career aspirations. Managerial coaching is a well-established approach that can develop, support, and improve work-related outcomes for employees. Yet, studies focusing on managerial coaching in virtual contexts are limited. To advance research on managerial coaching in virtual contexts, it is important to use rigorously tested and psychometrically verified scales. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to test measurement invariance and assess latent mean differences between virtual and traditional groups with data collected with one of the most widely used managerial coaching instruments. Data were obtained via MTurk in this cross-sectional, multi-survey design. Methodologically this study is unique in HRD because groups were equated with Propensity Score Matching before data analysis. Results indicate full scalar invariance between groups. Furthermore, traditional employees perceived that their managers exhibited more coaching behaviours than those perceived by virtual employees. Findings from this study provide support for the psychometric properties of this scale for these groups. Implications for research and practice and future research directions are discussed.