Team familiarity and innovation

What is it about?

Most of the tasks we work on involve teamwork. The current dominant viewpoint is that team familiarity leads to positive performance outputs at work, higher team performance, and organizational success. However, we reveal that existing studies use a limited range of theoretical underpinnings, remain vague on the meaning of “time” and “how long it takes for teams to become familiar”, and avoid critical discussions on potential counterproductive outcomes that may lead to a decline in team performance. Based on these gaps, we suggest advancing the team familiarity literature and provide ideas for future research. Overall, we argue that whereas team familiarity is favorable for routine and structured contexts, it might be less effective for innovative task environments. We suggest that more research needs to be conducted in 4 areas 1) the theoretical underpinnings around team relationships, social roles, and team formation; 2) the key antecedent “time”, with longitudinal studies to reveal which moments matter most in devolving team familiarity; 3) positive social outcomes for individuals and groups; and importantly; 4) potential counterproductive outcomes and U-shaped developments in innovation work.

Featured Image

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash