Sample of Focus Areas and Related Research

Teams & Technology: Virtual, Hybrid, Human-AI Teaming

Social perception in Human-AI teams: Warmth and competence predict receptivity to AI teammates

As artificial intelligence becomes a more common teammate in the workplace, how we feel about AI matters. This research shows that humans are more open to working with AI when they perceive it as competent and, to a lesser extent, warm. For managers building tech-integrated teams, this insight can shape how AI is introduced and integrated into daily workflows.

Authors:
Alexandra Harris-Watson, Lindsay Larson, Nina Lauharatanahirun, Leslie DeChurch, Noshir Contractor

Leading teams in the digital age: Four perspectives on technology and what they mean for leading teams

As digital tools reshape how teams collaborate, leadership must evolve too. This paper breaks down four key ways technology impacts team dynamics—from setting the stage to becoming a teammate itself—and offers practical insights into how leaders can adapt. If you're leading virtual teams, navigating AI collaboration, or steering innovation in a digital-first workplace, this research is your playbook.

Authors:
Lindsay Larson, Leslie DeChurch

Teams vs. crowds: A field test of the relative contribution of incentives, member ability, and emergent collaboration to crowd-based problem solving performance

Research following crowd-based teams competing on an open software innovation platform reveals that it’s not just talent or incentives that drive team success, but how and when people collaborate. The large-scale online experiment demonstrates that patterns of communication—especially bursts of active discussion and diverse information exchange—play a critical role in producing better solutions.

Authors:
Christoph Riedl, Anita Woolley

Staying apart to work better together: Team structure in cross-functional teams

When it comes to innovation, more team communication isn’t always better. This research shows that in large cross-functional teams, keeping some distance between subgroups can actually improve how knowledge is integrated. The research highlights how structuring teams to preserve functional boundaries—rather than blend them—can lead to better outcomes.

Authors:
Lindsay Larson, Alexandra Harris-Watson, Dorothy Carter, Raquel Asencio, Leslie DeChurch, Ruth Kanfer, Stephen Zaccaro

Human trust in artificial intelligence: Review of empirical research

Authors:
Ella Glikson, Anita Woolley

A cognitive approach to human–AI complementarity in dynamic decision-making

Authors:
Cleotilde Gonzales, Hoda Heidari

Together but alone: Atomization and peer support among gig workers

Authors:
Zheng Yao, Silas Weden, Lea Emerlyn, Haiyi Zhu, Robert Kraut

Willingness to work as a predictor of human-agent team success

Authors:
Nikolos Gurney, David Pynadath, John Miller

Speaking out of turn: How video conferencing reduces vocal synchrony and collective intelligence

Authors:
Maria Tomprou, Young Ji Kim,Prerna Chikersal, Anita Woolley, Laura Dabbish

Matching skills, past collaboration, and limited competition: Modeling when open-source projects attract contributors

Authors:
Hongbo Fang, James Herbsleb, Bogdan Vasilescu

Trust in collaborative automation in high stakes software engineering work: A case study at NASA

Authors:
David Gray Widder, Laura Dabbish, James Herbsleb, Alexandra Holloway, Scott Davidoff

Tools for Thought: Research and Design for Understanding, Protecting, and Augmenting Human Cognition with Generative AI

Authors:
Lev Tankelevitch, Elena L Glassman, Jessica He, Majeed Kazemitabaar, Aniket Kittur, Mina Lee, Srishti Palani, Advait Sarkar, Gonzalo Ramos, Yvonne Rogers, Hari Subramonyam

Complex Team Design: Cross-Sector, Fluid Membership

Joint Problem-Solving Orientation in Fluid Cross-Boundary Teams

In fast-changing, cross-sector teams—where members may change frequently—teams cannot rely on strong relationships to support performance. This 2021 research introduces “joint problem-solving orientation” as a key mindset that helps fluid teams overcome boundaries and deliver results despite the churn of their members.

Authors:
Michaela Kerrissey, Anna Mayo, Amy Edmondson

Coordination in Dynamic Teams: Investigating a Learning-Productivity Trade-Off

When teams form and reform constantly, can they manage both efficiency demands and the training of new, junior members? This experiment with inpatient medical teams reveals that team starts can spark coordination, and teams that manage both internal coordination and coordination with external partners may achieve both more efficient patient care and learning.

Authors:
Anna Mayo, Anita Woolley, Liny John, Christine March, Selma Witchel, Andrew Nowalk

Team functioning and performance in Child Advocacy Center multidisciplinary teams

In the complex setting of Children's Advocacy work, where fluid sets of representatives from multiple agencies must work together, it's easy for teamwork to breakdown. This study highlights the importance of how teams feel about working together—trust, psychological safety, and clear direction—as key factors driving team performance.

Authors:
Elizabeth McGuier, Scott Rothenberger, Kristine Campbell, Brooks Keeshin, Laurie Weingart, David Kolko

Enhancing Implementation of Complex Critical Care Interventions through Interprofessional Education

Team-based care in high-stakes environments like the ICU can falter—not due to lack of evidence, but because of gaps in teamwork. This paper discusses the role of interprofessional education—training disciplines together instead of in silos—as a useful solution.

Authors:
Kimberly Rak, Jeremy Kahn, Kelsey Linstrum, Erin Caplan, Linda Argote, et al

Teammate familiarity and risk of injury in emergency medical services

Authors:
P Daniel Patterson, Matthew Weaver, Douglas Landsittel, David Krackhardt, David Hostler, John Vena, Ashley Hughes, Eduardo Salas, Donald Yealy

When are clients helpful? Capitalising on client involvement in professional service delivery

Authors:
Na Fu, Patrick C Flood, Denise Rousseau, Tim Morris, Murray Johnstone

Cognitive versatility and adaptation to fluid participation in hospital emergency department teams

Authors:
Ishani Aggarwal, Anna Mayo, Toshio Murase, Evelyn Zhang, Brandy Aven, Anita Woolley

Staying apart to work better together: Team structure in cross-functional teams

Authors:
Lindsay Larson, Alexandra Harris-Watson, Dorothy Carter, Raquel Asencio, Leslie DeChurch, Ruth Kanfer, Stephen J. Zaccaro

The valley of trust: The effect of relational strength on monitoring quality

Authors:
Brandy Aven, Lily Morse, Alessandro Iorio

Syncing up: A process model of emergent interdependence in dynamic teams

Author:
Anna Mayo

Teamwork in the intensive care unit

Author:
Jennifer Ervin, Jeremy Kahn, Taya Cohen, Laurie Weingart

Team dating: A self-organized team formation strategy for collaborative crowdsourcing

Authors:
Ioanna Lykourentzou, Shannon Wang, Robert Kraut, Steven Dow

Collective Intelligence

Quantifying collective intelligence in human groups

Collective intelligence - a group’s capability to perform across many different tasks - is critical to solving many scientific, business, and other problems, but groups often fail to achieve it. This meta-analysis of 22 studies highlights key predictors, from team composition to collaboration processes.

Authors:
Christoph Riedl, Young Ji Kim, Pranav Gupta, Anita Woolley

Collective attention and collective intelligence: The role of hierarchy and team gender composition

This lab-based experiment suggests that what counts as "smart" collaboration can vary. Teams with majority women exhibited higher collective intelligence (CI) when their speaking patterns were more cooperative and synchronous (constitent with what is often expected of women), whereas teams with all men exhibited higher CI with more competitive interruptions.

Authors:
Anita Woolley, Rosalind Chow, Anna Mayo, Christoph Riedl, Jin Wook Chang

Speaking out of turn: How video conferencing reduces vocal synchrony and collective intelligence

In today’s remote work environment, teams often rely on video calls to stay connected—but is seeing each other really necessary for effective collaboration? This lab-based experiment shows that, surprisingly, it is the absence of visual cues that can helps teams to verbally "sync up," and that's what helps teams to solve problems more effectively.

Authors:
Maria Tomprou, Young Ji Kim, Prerna Chikersal, Anita Woolley, Laura Dabbish

Guiding Generalized Team Problem-Solving Through a Collective Intelligence-Based Artificial Intelligence Facilitator

This work introduces an AI facilitator that, in real time, monitors and intervenes to support key processes that predict collective intelligence. Across two studies, use of the facilitator improved team performance relative to not using it, and the AI facilitator was equally useful relative to a human facilitator.

Authors:
Elizabeth McGee, Jonathan Cagan, Christopher McComb

Teams vs. crowds: A field test of the relative contribution of incentives, member ability, and emergent collaboration to crowd-based problem solving performance

Authors:
Christoph Riedl, Anita Woolley

Variance in group ability to transform resources into performance, and the role of coordinated attention

Authors:
Anna Mayo, Anita Woolley

Understanding collective intelligence: Investigating the role of collective memory, attention, and reasoning processes

Authors:
Anita Woolley, Pranav Gupta

Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups

Authors:
Anita Woolley, Christopher Chabris, Alex Pentland, Nada Hashmi, Thomas Malone

Conflict & Diversity

Representational gaps, information processing, and conflict in functionally diverse teams

Diverse teams bring valuable perspectives—but they also risk misalignment. When team members interpret the task differently, it can lead to conflicting approaches and inefficiencies. This research explores how these “representational gaps” emerge and how they affect collaboration, offering insights into how teams process information and manage conflict in high-diversity environments.

Authors:
Matthew Cronin, Laurie Weingart

Workplace mistreatment and employee deviance: An investigation of the reciprocal relationship between hostile work environments and harmful work behaviors

A 12-week study of U.S. employees reveals a two-way cycle between workplace mistreatment and harmful behaviors like sabotage or verbal abuse—each triggering the other within just a week. This pattern remains stable over time. The findings offer practical insights for breaking cycles of conflict.

Authors:
Yeonjeong Kim, Taya Cohen, Abigail Panter

Mitigating ingroup bias in regulatory firms: The role of inspector professionalism

In a range of settings, regulators must work with clients. This research demonstrates ingroup bias, wherein regulators may unintentionally favor clients who share similar backgrounds, leading to less thorough oversight. However, the research also shows that a regulator's strong professional commitment can mitigate the impact of those biases.

Authors:
Sae-Seul Park, Sunkee Lee, Oliver Hahl

In the dark: Agent-based modeling of uninformed individuals within polarized groups

While it may seem counterproductive to include uninformed individuals in decision-making teams, this research shows they can help break deadlocks in polarized groups by fueling pressure to reach a consensus. Using a behavioral decision model, the study demonstrates that—even without expertise—these individuals can improve group outcomes, offering fresh insight into how diverse perspectives and social dynamics shape effective collaboration.

Authors:
Shannon Werntz, Daniel Oppenheimer

Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction: a meta-analysis

Authors:
Carsten De Dreu, Laurie Weingart

The no club: Putting a stop to women's dead-end work

Authors:
Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, Laurie Weingart

From exception to exceptional: How gender and tenure impact sponsor effectiveness

Authors:
Elizabeth Campbell, Brandy Aven, Rosalind Chow

The gendered complexity of sponsorship: How male and female sponsors’ goals shape their social network strategies

Authors:
Elizabeth Campbell, Catherine Shea

Born into chaos: How founding conditions shape whether ventures survive or thrive when experiencing environmental change

Authors:
D Carrington Motley, Charles Eesley, Wesley Koo

Lack of belonging predicts depressive symptomatology in college students

Authors:
Janine Dutcher, et al.

Planning for difference: Preparing students to create flexible and elaborated team charters that can adapt to support diverse teams

Authors:
Maria Feuer, Joanna Wolfe

Improving software engineering teamwork with structured feedback

Authors:
Victor Weiqi Huang, Kori Krueger, Taya Cohen, Michael Hilton

Team Learning & Innovation

Organizational learning processes and outcomes: Major findings and future research directions

Tracing the evolution of research on organizational learning, this piece highlights four key processes—search, knowledge creation, retention, and transfer—and explores how each is shaped by experience and context. Understanding these dynamics can help leaders support learning and performance in teams and organizations.

Authors:
Linda Argote, Sunkee Lee, Jisoo Park

Learning-by-Moving: Can Reconfiguring Spatial Proximity Between Organizational Members Promote Individual-level Exploration?

This study shows that simply moving employees’ workspaces closer together can spark more individual exploration and better performance. In a natural experiment at an e-commerce firm, individuals relocated near previously distant colleagues explored more and also achieved stronger financial results. The findings highlight how spatial design can influence the flow of information and learning.

Authors:
Sunkee Lee

Providing tailored reflection instructions in collaborative learning using large language models

This study explores the potential for using a large language model (LLM) to facilitate learning in collaborative problem-solving environments. Teams in a college-level computer science course were assigned to one of three reflection conditions, including one in which an LLM was designed to stimulate discussion. The LLM condition was particularly useful for students with lower prior knowledge learned.

Authors:
Atharva Naik, Jessica Ruhan Yin, Anusha Kamath, Qianou Ma, Sherry Tongshuang Wu, R. Charles Murray, Christopher Bogart, Majd Sakr, and Carolyn P. Rosé

A text-based measure of transactive memory system strength

A transactive memory systems (TMS) refers to a shared understanding of who knows what in a group, and it's an important predictor of group performance. This work develops an automated and unobtrusive assessment of TMS that is significantly correlated with the most frequently used survey measure, creating the potential for advancing the understanding of TMS by analyzing it in contexts where administering surveys is not feasible.

Authors:
Jonathan Kush, Linda Argote, Brandy Aven

Individual experience and experience working together: Predicting learning rates from knowing who knows what and knowing how to work together

Authors:
Ray Reagans, Linda Argote, Daria Brooks

The Roles of Learning and Status Attainment in Successful Newcomer Socialization: Random Assignments to Complex Projects and Early Career Outcomes

Authors:
Shihan Li, David Krackhardt, Nynke Niezink

Teamwork and implementation of innovations in healthcare and human service settings: a systematic review

Authors:
Elizabeth McGuier, David Kolko, Gregory Aarons, Allison Schachter, Mary Lou Klem, Matthew A Diabes, Laurie R Weingart, Eduardo Salas, Courtney Benjamin Wolk

Teacher‐versus researcher‐provided affirmation effects on students’ task engagement and positive perceptions of teachers

Authors:
Eric Smith, Christopher Rozek, Kody Manke, Carol Dweck, Gregory Walton