Working paper — not peer reviewed
A Periodic Table for Teamwork? Mapping Human Capabilities
Human capability as a testable map: foundations, evidence, and limits
A team can contain knowledgeable people and still fail to coordinate. A person can perform well in one setting and struggle in another. A useful account of human capability therefore needs to distinguish what people know, what they can do, how they usually behave, and what becomes possible through their interaction. The source working paper proposes eight broad categories to organize those questions. This expanded paper asks what would make that proposal scientifically useful. The assessment distinguishes a vocabulary, a classification, a measurement system, a predictive model, and an intervention. Success at one does not establish success at the others. Selected research supports particular individual and team constructs within the populations and tasks studied. It does not validate the eight categories as a mutually exclusive, exhaustive, or naturally periodic system. Several apparent defects already have conventional explanations: a construct can operate at several descriptive levels; different instruments can measure different things under the same name; and individual averages need not account for interaction-dependent group outcomes. An elementary mathematical audit establishes what category membership, factor-model fit, finite coverage checks, aggregation, and repeated observations can and cannot demonstrate. These results are conditional statements, not discoveries about human nature. The paper proposes comparative coding, measurement, prediction, intervention, and transportability studies, with an additional prerequisite for testing literal periodicity. The defensible present use is an explicitly provisional research vocabulary. Whether it improves understanding or decisions over simpler alternatives remains an empirical question.