The Effect of Team Size on Management Team Performance: The Mediating Role of Relationship Conflict and Team Cohesion

The purpose of the present study was to create a better understanding of the processes and emergent states that can explain the relationship between team size (number of members) and team performance in management teams. Although many researchers have looked at the relationship between team size and team performance in for instance student teams, experimental groups, and production teams, there are very few studies that so far have looked at mediating variables in this relationship. Within research on management teams, there are also few studies that have looked directly at why and how team size affects team performance. This study tested the proposition that team size has a general negative effect on the performance of management teams, and that relationship conflict and team cohesion partially mediates this relationship. Data was collected from 215 management teams primarily from Norway and Denmark. The teams ranged in size from three to 23 with a mean of 7.37. The results showed that when tested separately, both relationship conflict and team cohesion mediated a negative effect of team size on team performance. When the mediators were tested in the same model, only team cohesion mediated the impact of team size on team performance. The findings indicate that team cohesion is the primary driver of the two mediators in explaining the negative effects of team size on team performance. Although relationship conflict is involved in the size-performance association, an increase in relationship conflict is most likely an effect of a decrease in team cohesion, which in turn sets off a negative spiral between the two mediators