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Team Development Process: Its Nature and Influencing Factors

4. Originality/Contribution

This study responds to the literature's call to explore the factors that trigger team
development in a multilevel and multiple time point manners (Hare, 1976; McGrath, 1986;

Seers and Woodruff, 1997; Tuckman, 1965) and proposes specific factors that influence
team development and non-linear development.
According to the life cycle model (Tuckman, 1965), task and relationship
development do not occur in pairs simultaneously; however, the current study proposes

that they trigger each other, similar to the movement of two feet, where one foot leads and
the other follows. The supplements proposed by this study to the life cycle model include:
(1) the factors that influence team development are psychological safety, the degree of
relatedness between team tasks and team members' organizational roles, leadership, and

team constraints; and (2) the factors that lead to non-linear team development are task
design and leadership style.
These modifications and supplements respond to criticisms of the life cycle model in
previous literature, such as treating teams as closed systems, overlooking mechanisms of

change, and neglecting the influence of team-context relationships on team development
(Gersick, 1988).
In terms of its contribution to the punctuated equilibrium model literature, this study
simultaneously incorporates multiple temporal and multilevel factors called by Seers

and Woodruff (1997). The results of this study support the assertion of the punctuated
equilibrium model that special events trigger team development (Gersick, 1988; Zellmer-
Bruhn, 2003), while also supplementing a boundary condition. Specifically, whether
special events affect the team's equilibrium state depends on the stability of the current

phase.
Additionally, this study identifies three categories of factors that impact the
equilibrium state: (1) member churn, (2) changes in leadership, and (3) changes in team
constraints. These results correspond to and validate the factors mentioned in the literature

(Gersick and Hackman, 1990; Seers and Woodruff, 1997).
Finally, studies on team development and team performance are typically conducted
separately. This research integrates the two study areas and explores the factors that may
influence team development based on the IMO model (Mathieu, Gallagher, Domingo,

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