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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of team boundedness, and formal coordination on task and social cohesion and the moderating effect of organization tenure diversity.

Data was gathered from the responses of 398 team members and leaders working in 111 software development teams to a questionnaire survey. The hypotheses were all tested using structural equation modelling.

The results show team boundedness and formal coordination have positive and significant associations with task and social cohesion. Formal coordination is a stronger positive predictor for task than social cohesion. Organization tenure has a greater negative effect on social cohesion than task cohesion and moderates the relationship between formal coordination and task cohesion.

Therefore, for organizations to optimize team cohesion the impact of antecedent variables on social and task cohesion should be taken into considering in planning strategies for improvement.

This paper has an original approach by adding to the literature through an examination of the antecedent variables of task and social cohesion which are two key components of team cohesion.

This study aims to address the challenge many organizational leaders face in fostering workforce cohesion. Focusing on the context of sports club volunteering, this study investigates how leaders can enhance group cohesion among volunteers. The study findings provide valuable insights applicable across various work settings.

Through a multilevel design, this study examined the role of autonomy–supportive and structuring leadership in shaping social and task cohesion within volunteer teams at the group level. In total, 557 volunteers nested within 52 nonprofit sports clubs situated in the Flemish region of Belgium were involved in this study, providing a robust foundation for our analysis.

This research revealed that regular volunteers form “true groups”, exhibiting substantial between-group variance in social and task cohesion and a strong within-group consensus. Additionally, the findings underscored the significance of autonomy–supportive leadership in fostering cohesion, demonstrating a positive relation with social and task cohesion at the group level.

This study demonstrates that volunteer teams, like work teams in the for-profit sector, actively engage in interpersonal exchanges within their organization, which help shape their collective sense of unity and alignment with common objectives. Leaders can enhance these interactions by fostering an autonomy–supportive environment where members feel empowered to share their perspectives and ideas. Additionally, the findings suggest that the nature of the task and the specific context can influence which leadership style is most effective, with the provision of structure also playing a role. With these insights, leaders in diverse organizational settings can effectively nurture the development of cohesive groups.

Although research on how the downstream calculations of a patent’s profit potential influence invention renewal decisions is extensive, the impact of the upstream knowledge creation stages is overlooked. The purpose of this study is to address this theoretical vacuum by examining the intra-organizational configuration of knowledge networks and collaboration networks.

The data consist of 491 global pharmaceutical firms that patent in the USA. Drawing on patent records, the authors simultaneously construct intra-organizational knowledge networks and collaboration networks and identify network cohesion features (i.e. local and global). The authors employ panel fixed-effects models to test the hypotheses.

The results show that local knowledge cohesion and local social cohesion decrease invention renewals, while global knowledge cohesion and global social cohesion increase renewals. Moreover, the marginal effects of local and global social cohesion are stronger than those of local and global knowledge cohesion, respectively.

The hypotheses are tested using the pharmaceutical industry as a research setting, which limits the generalizability of our findings. In addition, potential formal and informal contingencies are not considered.

Despite its limitations, this study provides valuable implications. First, managers are cautioned against the adverse effects of local cohesion structures on invention renewal. Second, firms can dynamically adjust their local and global network configuration strategies to harmonize the generation of valuable inventions and the retention of good ideas.

Complementary to previous research that focused on inventions’ performance feedback, this study delves into upstream knowledge creation stages to understand invention renewals.

Drawing on social learning theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between team cohesion and employee adaptive performance directly and through employee ambidexterity. The study also investigates the moderating role of team empowerment climate in the relationship between team cohesion and employee adaptive performance.

Time-lagged data were collected in two waves from a sample of 212 employees from 43 teams working in software houses in Pakistan. R (lavaan package) was used to analyze the multilevel framework.

The findings reveal that both team cohesion and employee ambidexterity positively relate to employee adaptive performance. Moreover, employee ambidexterity mediates the cross-level relationship between team cohesion and employee adaptive performance. The results also support that team empowerment climate (a contextual boundary condition) moderates the direct relationship between team cohesion and employee adaptive performance.

The primary novelty of this study lies in developing and examining a holistic conceptual framework for a multilevel model in the software industry that incorporates team cohesion (level 2) as an antecedent, employee ambidexterity (level 1) as an underlying mechanism, employee adaptive performance (level 1) as an outcome and team empowerment climate as a boundary condition (level 2).

Successful teams tend to be highly cohesive and team cohesion to be particularly helpful in allowing teams and their members to sustain their success even in the most challenging times. One disillusioning consequence of this reciprocity between cohesion and performance would suggest that failures made by teams and/or their members likely jeopardize their success by preventing them from capitalizing on such virtuous circles associated with team cohesion. Yet, many teams uphold their performance despite the failures they have to cope with, suggesting that the potential vicious circles can be overcome. This chapter aims at illuminating the vicious and virtuous circles associated with team cohesion that are induced by either collective failures of teams or individual failures of their members. It therefore offers a multilevel perspective not only on the emergence and diffusion of failures at the individual and team levels, but also on the critical role that team cohesion plays for a team’s (dys)functional coping across these levels. It is theorized that collective failures triggered exogenously can help build team cohesion, and that whether endogenously-triggered collective failures bring about the vicious or the virtuous circles of team cohesion depends on whether the individual failures developing into collective failures are triggered endogenously or exogenously. The implications of this conceptual work are discussed in light of the literatures on error/failure management and group cohesiveness.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

Group cohesion is among the most researched constructs linked to team effectiveness, and performance (Rosh, Offermann, & Van Diest, 2012). While meta-analytic evidence has established strong linkages between cohesion and performance (e.g., Beal, Cohen, Burke, & McLendon, 2003), the functions and structure of cohesion have received limited attention within this literature. In this chapter, we begin to address this gap in the literature by reviewing extant knowledge regarding the structural and functional properties of cohesion to introduce an integrative framework of the function and structure of cohesion. Our framework is designed to address two key questions: (1) Why are groups cohesive – that is, what function(s) does cohesion serve for an individual and/or groups? and (2) What are the elemental forms of cohesion within groups – that is, what is the structure of cohesion within teams? Our integrative framework posits that cohesion serves two main functions within groups: an affective and an instrumental function. These functions serve to characterize the structure of cohesion into four conceptually related but distinct facets that include interpersonal and group belongingness; and social and task elements of cohesion. Furthermore, we specify that these elemental facets occur both horizontally (among individuals with similar standing within groups) and vertically (among individuals with different standing within the groups). We discuss advantages and disadvantages of our framework and conclude with implications for research and practice.

This study examines whether there are unintended consequences that emerge from status interventions in task groups in relation to cohesion and solidarity. Past theorists have argued that inconsistent status structures produce weaker levels of cohesion and solidarity in comparison to consistent status structures.

Data come from an online experiment involving mixed-sex dyads interacting in one of three conditions. Participants individually completed an ambiguous problem-solving task and then worked together over Zoom audio to form a group decision. In the three conditions, participants were either given no performance feedback before the problem-solving task or were informed the male or the female participant performed better on a pretest related to the task. The conversations were recorded and analyzed using measures related to paraverbal synchronization and accommodation.

In terms of self-reported cohesion, there appeared to be a difference, albeit a weak one, in only the inconsistent-status condition, with female participants reporting higher levels of cohesion in comparison to males. However, in terms of solidarity, there was no significant difference between the conditions.

Although inconsistent status structures were associated with weaker perceptions of cohesion, it did not appear to impact solidarity like theorists have suggested. Status structures do not appear to impact group solidarity.

The nature of group membership in conjunction with status consistency/inconsistency may produce the significant differences in solidarity that theorists have suggested.

To date, there has been little empirical examination of how status consistency affects cohesion and solidarity. Relatedly, the current study advances the research on vocal accommodation by analyzing status and solidarity simultaneously.

The relationship between team cohesion and individual well-being is clear. Being part of a highly cohesive team is likely to contribute to the well-being of individual team members. A multidirectional relationship is likely as individual well-being is also likely to contribute to team cohesion. This chapter examines such critical relationships in the context of team performance. To do so, we draw on the dominant literatures related to these concepts, focusing on two specific types of team cohesion – social cohesion and task cohesion – and two specific types of well-being – subjective well-being (SWB) and psychological well-being (PWB). We contend that social cohesion and SWB are likely to be strongly related, while task cohesion and PWB are likely to share a strong relationship. Therefore, the chapter focuses on the evidence regarding the transactional relationship between social team cohesion and SWB, and transactional relationship between task team cohesion and PWB. Of course, we also recognize the close relationships between social and task cohesion, and between SWB and PWB. We consider the practical implications of studying the relationships between these concepts and put forth a number of recommendations for future research in this area.

Teams are best positioned for success when certain enabling conditions are in place such as the right mix of individuals. Effective team staffing considers team members’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) as well as the configuration of team member KSAOs and their relations, called team composition. In practice, however, how to integrate team composition considerations into team staffing to facilitate outcomes such as team cohesion can seem nebulous. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how team member KSAOs and their configurations and relations affect team cohesion, and suggest how this information can inform team staffing. We frame team cohesion as an aspect of team human capital to understand when it may be an important consideration for staffing. We describe multilevel considerations in staffing cohesive teams. We summarize theories that link team composition to team cohesion via interpersonal attraction, a shared team identity, and team task commitment. Finally, we propose a six-step approach for staffing cohesive teams, and describe a few areas for future research.