Leveraging historiometry to better understand teams in context

Abstract

The prevalence of teams in organizational settings has dramatically increased over the last 50 years, and as such, researchers have made much progress in understanding the conditions and intra-team dynamics that facilitate successful team performance. However, much remains to be learned due to the complexity of teams. This complexity often makes it difficult to study teams operating in context, especially when trying to examine longitudinal aspects of teams. Adding to this difficulty, studying teams in context is resource intensive and access is often a key barrier, especially if the focus is on teams that are elite or that operate in extreme environments. This drives a need to look outside the traditional methodological tools typically utilized to study teams. Thereby, the purpose of this manuscript is to highlight a method that while not typically utilized in the team literature can offer benefits when exploring team dynamics in context—historiometry.