Opening the black box of team processes and emergent states: A literature review and agenda for research on team facilitation

Abstract

The effects of facilitation on team outcomes have been in the focus of many studies. However, only a few quantitative studies investigate how teams evolve through team processes and emergent states. The goal of this review paper is to synthesize quantitative research studies to better understand the constructs of facilitation and to identify future avenues of facilitation research. We performed a structured literature review to identify relevant quantitative studies using the input-mediator-outcome model to group elicited constructs of facilitation. We found that most studies treat team processes and emergent states as a black box. We argue that we need to open this black box and include measures that allow for conceptualizing how human and automated facilitation affects team outcomes. Hence, we propose a research agenda, which enhances current models explaining team outcomes by a conceptualization and measurement of team processes and emergent states. © 2014 IEEE.