Team tenure and team performance: A meta-analysis and process model

Team tenure is a key component of models of team effectiveness. However, the nature of the relationship between team tenure and team performance is unclear due to underdeveloped theory on the nature of team tenure, various unintegrated theoretical conceptualizations of team tenure, and mixed empirical findings. Further, there is a lack of theory as to the intervening team processes and emergent states that account for the “black box” of the team tenure–team performance relationship. Accordingly, we conducted meta-analyses of the relationships of team tenure with team processes and performance. Our results, based on 622 effect sizes reported in 169 studies, show that team tenure, conceptualized as additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion, is positively related to team performance. Relative weights analysis found additive team tenure to be a relatively more important predictor of team performance than collective team tenure or team tenure dispersion. We found that team cognition, motivational-affective states, and behavioral processes mediate the relationships of additive team tenure, collective team tenure, and team tenure dispersion with team performance, respectively. We discuss the implications of these findings for research and practice.