A 31-Year Bibliometric Review of Team Effectiveness Research: Evolution, Trends, and Future Directions

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.