TY - JOUR
T1 - A 31-Year Bibliometric Review of Team Effectiveness Research: Evolution, Trends, and Future Directions
AU - Barrios-Fleitas, Yeray
AU - Hoogeboom, Marcella A.M.G.
AU - Eysink, Tessa H.S.
AU - Rensink, Arend
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
PY - 2026/2/12
Y1 - 2026/2/12
N2 - The widespread use of teams across society has driven interest in understanding team effectiveness. Prior reviews often focus on specific disciplines or contexts (e.g., sports or medicine). Using systematic bibliometric protocols enriched with machine learning, this study synthesizes 6,051 peer-reviewed publications from Scopus and WoS, covering 1992 to 2022, to examine the evolution of team effectiveness research, key contributors, influential publications, and emerging trends. Results reveal exponential growth—Co-authorship, co-citation, and co-word analyses—identified influential venues, authors, publications, and 10 thematic pillars: TEAM PROCESSES; TEAM COMPOSITION & DIVERSITY; EMERGENT STATES; TEAM COGNITION; LEADERSHIP; TECHNOLOGY, VIRTUAL & HYBRID TEAMS; TEAM OUTCOMES & EFFECTIVENESS INDICATORS; ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT & TEAM SUPPORT; TEAM DEVELOPMENT & TRAINING; and MULTI-TEAM SYSTEMS & INTER-TEAM DYNAMICS. Emerging trends include AI integration, adaptive leadership in diverse contexts, and conflict resolution in hybrid teams. This review offers a research agenda and a dynamic, open-access dataset to support future studies.
AB - The widespread use of teams across society has driven interest in understanding team effectiveness. Prior reviews often focus on specific disciplines or contexts (e.g., sports or medicine). Using systematic bibliometric protocols enriched with machine learning, this study synthesizes 6,051 peer-reviewed publications from Scopus and WoS, covering 1992 to 2022, to examine the evolution of team effectiveness research, key contributors, influential publications, and emerging trends. Results reveal exponential growth—Co-authorship, co-citation, and co-word analyses—identified influential venues, authors, publications, and 10 thematic pillars: TEAM PROCESSES; TEAM COMPOSITION & DIVERSITY; EMERGENT STATES; TEAM COGNITION; LEADERSHIP; TECHNOLOGY, VIRTUAL & HYBRID TEAMS; TEAM OUTCOMES & EFFECTIVENESS INDICATORS; ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT & TEAM SUPPORT; TEAM DEVELOPMENT & TRAINING; and MULTI-TEAM SYSTEMS & INTER-TEAM DYNAMICS. Emerging trends include AI integration, adaptive leadership in diverse contexts, and conflict resolution in hybrid teams. This review offers a research agenda and a dynamic, open-access dataset to support future studies.
KW - UT-Hybrid-D
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105029936550
U2 - 10.1177/10464964251378781
DO - 10.1177/10464964251378781
M3 - Article
SN - 1046-4964
VL - 57
SP - 145
EP - 216
JO - Small group research
JF - Small group research
IS - 1
ER -