Look back, move forward: A bibliometric review of team literature.

Abstract

Objective: Team research has flourished, becoming a key research area across organizational behavior, managerial psychology, and social psychology in recent decades. As a complement to existing reviews of team literature, most of which focus on different specific facets of teams, we apply bibliometric analyses to offer a quantitative review that comprehensively visualizes the holistic landscape and evolution of the field. Method: We conduct descriptive analyses and four types of bibliometric analyses—co-authorship analyses, document co-citation analyses, journal co-citation analyses, and keyword analyses—using 3,643 articles published from 1998 to 2021 and 302,776 associated references in the Web of Science database. Results: With the help of the analytical tool (i.e., CiteSpace), our analyses identify the predominant co-authorship network, the influential landmark works, and the evolving research frontiers in team literature in a more visual way. Conclusions: Rather than relying on impressionistic judgments or narrowly focusing on one specific topic, our bibliometric review uses a massive volume of objective data to decipher the collaboration network of team researchers, along with the knowledge base and development of team literature. In this way, we provide a valuable map for team researchers to help them quickly scan the overall picture of the literature and locate pertinent information for their own research interests. Our findings also indicate promising possible directions for moving the team literature forward.