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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.

This chapter analyzes the ways that individuals develop person-to-group ties. The chapter reviews the development and evidentiary basis of the theory of relational cohesion, the affect theory of social exchange, and the theory of social commitments.

We survey twenty-five years of published literature on these theories, and review unpublished theoretical tests and extensions that are currently in progress.

The research program has grown substantially over the past twenty-five years to encompass more varied and diverse phenomena. The findings indicate that structural interdependencies, repeated exchanges, and a sense of shared responsibility are key conditions for people to develop affective ties to groups, organizations, and even nation-states.

The research implies that if people are engaged in joint tasks, they attribute positive or negative feelings from those tasks to their local groups (teams, departments) and/or to larger organizations (companies, communities). To date, empirical tests have focused on microlevel processes.

Our work has practical implications for how managers or supervisors organize tasks and work routines in a way to maximize group or organizational commitment.

This research helps to understand problems of fragmentation that are faced by decentralized organizations and also how these can be overcome.

The chapter represents the most complete and comprehensive review of the theory of relational cohesion, the affect theory of social exchange, and the theory of social commitments to date.

To better understand contributing factors and mediating mechanisms related to team dynamics in isolated, confined, and extreme (ICE) environments.

Literature review.

Our primary focus is on cohesion and adaptation – two critical aspects of team performance in ICE environments that have received increased attention in both the literature and funding initiatives. We begin by describing the conditions that define ICE environments and review relevant individual biological, neuropsychiatric, and environmental factors that interact with team dynamics. We then outline a unifying team cohesion framework for long-duration missions and discuss several environmental, operational, organizational, and psychosocial factors that can impact team dynamics. Finally, we end with a discussion of directions for future research and countermeasure development, emphasizing the importance of temporal dynamics, multidisciplinary integration, and novel conceptual frameworks for the inherently mixed work and social setting of long-duration missions in ICE environments.

A better understanding of team dynamics over time can contribute to success in a variety of organizational settings, including space exploration, defense and security, business, education, athletics, and social relationships.

We promote a multidisciplinary approach to team dynamics in ICE environments that incorporates dynamic biological, behavioral, psychological, and organizational factors over time.

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.

Cohesion is a key contributor to team effectiveness, leading to great interest in understanding how to diagnose, monitor, and enhance it in practice. However, there is great inconsistency in how cohesion is conceptualized and measured, making it difficult to compare findings across studies, and therefore limiting the ability to advance science and practice. To begin addressing these issues, we draw from qualitative and quantitative analyses and extract themes indicating what matters most for effective cohesion measurement. Such themes are presented around six major questions – who, what, when, where, why, and how – as they pertain to each major component of the cohesion measurement process. Emerging approaches to cohesion measurement and corresponding avenues for future research are also discussed.

The relationship between intergroup conflict and intragroup cohesion is a longstanding concern in sociology and related disciplines. Past work suggests that intergroup conflict shapes emotional bonds between group members, promotes in-group and out-group stereotyping, encourages self-sacrifice for the group, and changes the social structure of groups. Conflict thus plays an important structural role in organizing social interaction. Although sociologists contributed much to the beginnings of this research tradition, sociological attention to the conflict–cohesion link has waned in recent decades. We contend that despite advances in our understanding of the conflict–cohesion hypothesis, more remains to be done, and sociologists are especially equipped to tackle these unanswered questions. As such, we encourage sociologists to revisit the study of intergroup conflict and intragroup cohesion and offer some possibilities for furthering our understanding of this phenomenon. After reviewing and evaluating the relevant literatures on the conflict–cohesion hypothesis, we consider ways in which a broad range of current theories from the group process tradition – including theories of status, exchange, justice, identity, and emotion – could contribute to understanding the conflict–cohesion hypothesis and how those theories could benefit from considering the conflict–cohesion hypothesis. In doing so, we make a case for the continuing importance of sociology in explaining the link between intergroup conflict and intragroup cohesion.

The purpose of this chapter is to advance the medical sociology literature on the relationship between social cohesion and SRHS on an individual level. There is little information about how neighborhood social characteristics affect seniors’ SRHS. Guided by tenets of the collective efficacy theory, this chapter hypothesized that older individuals who perceived that their neighborhood has high levels of social cohesion around elderly issues will have better SRHS. A secondary hypothesis investigates whether the relationship was attenuated once their neighbors’ actual, self-reported attitudes toward seniors were taken into account.

Data come from a telephone survey of Indianapolis, Indiana residents, court data, and census information.

Logistic regression analyses indicated that both social cohesion and low income are statistically significant predictors of poor self-rated health status. Although both are statistically significant, the protective association between cohesion and poor SRHS (−0.69 log odds) is of similar magnitude to the risky association between income and poor health (−0.64 log odds).

Consistent with the classic work of Durkheim who found that individuals who were more socially integrated with society had lower rates of suicide, our study found a significant association between social cohesion and SRHS.

Future research is needed to target other health status outcomes in other geographical locations. Even though the body of research exploring the predictors of SRHS among older individuals is quite robust, this chapter adds to a more recent growing body of research, which has articulated the importance of the social environment in which an individual lives, especially community-dwelling older adults, is associated with their health status.

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.

This chapter reviews the challenges associated with measuring and studying cohesion over time and provides guidance for addressing these issues in future research.

We reviewed the team cohesion and team development literatures, including definitions and conceptualizations of cohesion as well as the seminal team development taxonomies. We then integrated these literatures to identify the challenges and potential solutions for studying team cohesion as a dynamic construct.

We identified five key challenges – theoretical and practical in nature – that researchers and organizations often face in capturing and studying team cohesion emergence: problems with self-report measures; measuring multiple dimensions of cohesion at appropriate times; failure to combine multilevel and temporal frameworks; and tracking of team and organizational events. In response, we provide actions that researchers can take in addressing these challenges: using indirect/unobtrusive measures; using social network analysis; studying “swift cohesion”; adopting an event system theory framework; and applying agent-based modeling.

This comprehensive chapter provides recommendations for studying team cohesion as a dynamic, emergent process rather than as a static state. We discuss the challenges pertaining to study design and measurement when capturing team cohesion emergence, and provide theoretical and practical ideas to guide researchers in overcoming these issues in future research.

This chapter suggests tools and data collection techniques that organizations and practitioners can use for measuring and improving team cohesion, such as using unobtrusive measures and timing measurement according to team and organizational events.

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.