Two sides of the same coin: Exploring how the bright and dark sides of team cohesion can influence sport team performance

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the potential positive and negative effects of team cohesion on team performance in a sport organization. Unbalanced panel data of 10 teams for the past 22 years (1997 season through the 2017–2018 season) from the Korean Basketball League were collected. A social network analysis approach was employed to measure network density as a proxy variable to measure team cohesion. The panel analysis results indicated team cohesion was shown to have a positive influence on team performance in the linear model as well as a negative influence on team performance in the quadratic model. The interaction effect of manager-player density did not influence team performance. In this study, the pattern of the relationship between team cohesion and performance was an inverted U-shape. Summarily, the density of a player’s school network could negatively influence team performance when it exceeds an optimal density level.