What Makes Teams Work: Group Effectiveness Research from the Shop Floor to the Executive Suite

TLDR

The article reviews team and group research published between 1990 and 1996 in organizational settings. It analyzes studies on effectiveness dimensions using a heuristic framework that links task, group, and organization design, environmental, internal and external processes, and psychosocial traits, and examines four team types—work, parallel, project, and management—within this framework. The review compares variables across team types, notes progress made, identifies remaining gaps, summarizes key learnings from the past six years, and proposes future research directions.

Abstract

In this article, we summarize and review the research on teams and groups in organization settings published from January 1990 to April 1996. The article focuses on studies in which the dependent variables are concerned with various dimensions of effectiveness. A heuristic framework illustrating recent trends in the literature depicts team effectiveness as a function of task, group, and organization design factors, environmental factors, internal processes, external processes, and group psychosocial traits. The review discusses four types of teams: work, parallel, project, and management. We review research findings for each type of team organized by the categories in our heuristic framework. The article concludes by comparing the variables studied for the different types of teams, highlighting the progress that has been made, suggesting what still needs to be done, summarizing key leamings from the last six years, and suggesting areas for further research.