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Abstract

This study aims to review and synthesize the literature on friendship in a team or group to understand the mixed results. To meet the research purpose, a systematic literature review was used as a primary methodology. Based on the eligibility criteria, 36 studies related to friendship in a team or group were selected and reviewed. The findings present a variety of definitions of friendship in a team or group and the evolution of friendship measurement. The review also shows that the included studies adopted mainly two theories: social network theory and social capital theory. Lastly, our analyses reveal the positive effects of friendship in a team or group and the divergent effects of friendship based on the role of prior friendship ties. This research contributes to the extant human resource development (HRD) literature and practice by examining boundary conditions that affect the relationship between friendship in teams or groups and individual or organizational outcomes. Further, the findings of this research will be used as an important theoretical basis to build hypotheses for research on teams, while also offering practical implications for HRD practitioners, such as strategies to foster positive team dynamics, enhance performance, and build inclusive organizational cultures through intentional management of workplace friendships.

Keywords

friendship tie team group systematic literature review

Introduction

Friendship has long been recognized as central to psychological well-being, happiness, and health (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Demir et al., 2015; Helliwell & Huang, 2013). Extending this idea to organizational contexts, Xing (2022) identifies workplace friendship as an informal and interpersonal relationship that improves productivity. More specifically, workplace friendship can be defined as a social relationship involving a connection and interaction with others, with a willingness to provide mutual support and share emotions and values at the workplace. In organizational settings, however, the significance of friendship is frequently overshadowed by formal performance indicators such as sales metrics and project completion rates (Sias, 2009). Nevertheless, emerging research suggests that workplace friendship contributes meaningfully to organizational effectiveness. For example, pre-existing friendship ties directly influence a team’s initial trust levels, communication patterns, and psychological safety (Buvik & Rolfsen, 2015). A mix of existing friends and acquaintances provides different interaction styles (Ren et al., 2015). Friends within teams are more likely to share their expertise, offer help, and provide emotional support (Sias et al., 2004). Friends generally communicate more candidly. Such candor can improve decision-making and creativity when constructive criticism and support co-exist (Jehn & Shah, 1997).

Given these advantages, workplace friendship is increasingly recognized as a critical asset in contemporary team-based organizations. Teams, enabling organizations to tackle complex problems more effectively than any single person, have become a fundamental unit of organizations to address the challenges of the modern business environment (Yao et al., 2024). Along with this trend, scholars have paid attention to research on how to increase team effectiveness based on the Input, Mediator, Output, and Input (IMOI) model, emphasizing the feedback loop where outputs inform and modify inputs in subsequent cycles (Ilgen et al., 2005). In other words, identifying inputs to provide the foundation of team functioning and mediators representing the processes or mechanisms through which inputs are transformed into outputs (i.e., team performance and effectiveness) has become a critical topic. Input generally includes individual-level variables (e.g., individual knowledge and skills, and personality traits), team-level variables (e.g., team diversity and team structure), and organizational context (e.g., organizational culture and resources). Mediators consist of two categories: team processes (e.g., communication, coordination, and conflict resolution; Kim & Ko, 2021) and emergent states (e.g., cohesion, trust, psychological safety, and team efficacy; Käosaar et al., 2022).

Although the IMOI framework requires scholars to consider diverse factors, investing in inputs appropriately creates a conducive environment where effective processes naturally emerge as the foundational inputs set the groundwork for processes to function effectively (Mathieu et al., 2008). In particular, team composition, a configuration of team member attributes, is critical to team effectiveness because it lays the foundation for how team members interact, coordinate, and perform tasks (Bell et al., 2018). A wide body of literature has explored the aspects of team composition, such as personality mixes (e.g., Acton et al., 2020; Peeters et al., 2006), demographic diversity (e.g., Triana et al., 2021), functional diversity (e.g., Hofhuis et al., 2018), value diversity (e.g., Woehr et al., 2013), and team faultlines (e.g., Zhang & Chen, 2023). In general, while team composition emphasizes the importance of members with diverse characteristics for different perspectives, such diversity may sometimes lead to interpersonal tensions or challenges in achieving team cohesion. Thus, organizations should consider ways to leverage the benefits of diversity while simultaneously mitigating its potential negative effects in the context of teams.

In this regard, workplace friendship emerges as an important factor in addressing the interpersonal tensions arising from diversity (Dietz & Fasbender, 2022). This issue has gained renewed importance in today’s workplace, where remote and hybrid work environments have made it harder to build informal bonds, potentially weakening team cohesion. While workplace friendships may appear to offer clear advantages, an increasing number of studies highlight the complexities and potential drawbacks associated with friendship in professional settings (Pillemer & Rothbard, 2018). For example, friendship can blur professional boundaries, leading to challenges in maintaining objectivity, which, in turn, may result in difficulties when providing constructive feedback or making impartial decisions (Methot et al., 2016). Workplace friendships may lead to perceptions of favoritism, causing feelings of inequity among team members, and such perceptions can diminish morale and collaboration (Pearce & Wang, 2024). Excessive socialization among friends at work can lead to distractions, reducing the time and attention devoted to work tasks (Pillemer & Rothbard, 2018).

The inconsistent findings indicate a need to more comprehensively understand what and how workplace friendships may lead to harmful or beneficial outcomes. Although literature reviews on team effectiveness exist (e.g., Delgado Piña et al., 2008; Mathieu et al., 2019), previous literature has rarely integrated and critically synthesized research specifically examining workplace friendship within teams or groups. A few studies have addressed the effect of workplace friendship through meta-analytic reviews, but they have focused on partial constructs and variables according to their research foci. For example, Chen et al. (2024) paid attention to the effect of friendship on organizational commitment through well-being, while Wang et al. (2024) reviewed the effects of demographic characteristics such as gender, age, tenure, hierarchy, education, and marital status on workplace friendship, testing collectivism and data collection year as moderators. The lack of a comprehensive review of workplace friendship in the previous studies highlights an important gap that this study aims to address. In particular, workplace friendship is an important research topic for human resource development (HRD), as HRD is fundamentally concerned with enhancing both individual and organizational performance. Such friendships are closely linked to relationship building, which can help mitigate conflict, foster collaboration, and promote informal learning (Sias et al., 2012).

Thus, this study aims to review and synthesize the literature on workplace friendship in teams or groups to understand the mechanisms through which it operates. Based on this research objective, the following research questions are formulated:

Research Question 1:

How has friendship been defined in empirical literature?

Research Question 2:

What theories have been utilized to explain the effects of friendship on team or group performance in literature?

Research Question 3:

How has friendship been measured and what outcomes have been found to be associated with friendship?

Research Question 4:

What evidence is there concerning different types of friendships (ties) and team composition dynamics associated with the outcomes of friendship?

This research contributes to the extant team literature by examining boundary conditions that affect the relationship between friendship in teams or groups and organizational outcomes. In particular, an integrated theoretical framework that we have developed provides a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the impacts of friendship on team or group performance in the field of HRD. Further, the findings and framework of this research can be used as an important theoretical basis to build hypotheses for research on teams. Therefore, this study can shed light on friendship research in HRD and also stimulate HRD practitioners to consider friendship a pivotal factor for team performance.

Methods

Systematic Literature Review

This study used a systematic literature review as a primary methodology. The systematic and transparent application of predefined criteria and processes in a systematic literature review enhances the validity of the study, allows for rigorous identification, screening, and selection of relevant literature, and enhances the generalizability of the results through the synthesis of accumulated empirical evidence (Denyer & Tranfield, 2009; Tranfield et al., 2003), rather than using a particular analytical framework like IMOI that is mentioned in the section of introduction. Our review adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009). The PRISMA framework ensures comprehensive coverage and methodological rigor by guiding the systematic collection, analysis, and synthesis of the literature, providing a transparent and replicable method for reviewing existing research.

As for the identification step, in July 2024, a literature search was conducted using a library website affiliated with one of the authors. To comprehensively cover literature from major sources, three databases were accessed: Web of Science, Scopus, and Academic Search Premier. We required the search keywords to appear in titles, and the keywords were as follows: “friendship” AND “team”, “friendship” AND “group”, “tie” AND “team”, “tie” AND “group”, “closeness” AND “team”, “closeness” AND “group”, “collegiality” AND “team”, “collegiality” AND “group”. We intentionally did not include terms such as “workplace”, or “organization” to initially cast a wide net and ensure comprehensiveness. This broader search strategy enabled us to identify all potentially relevant articles first, after which we specifically screened for studies set within team or organizational contexts. Only English-language, peer-reviewed articles published within the last ten years were included in the initial search.

For the screening procedure, the search yielded a total of 232 articles. After eliminating five duplicates, 227 articles were subject to screening. Next, each article was screened by reviewing titles and abstracts based on three criteria: (a) research participants were not adults (e.g., children, teens, girls, boys), (b) the study was not adjacent to the field of HRD (e.g., regional studies, statistics, engineering, politics, finance), and (c) the discussed friendship was not within the group, team, or organization. This record screening on titles and abstracts resulted in the removal of 162 articles. Through the eligibility process, further examination of the full texts led to the exclusion of 29 additional articles that did not meet the screening criteria and were deemed irrelevant. Consequently, in the included stage, 36 articles remained for in-depth analysis (See Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Flow of Literature Search Phases (Based on Guidelines by Moher et al., 2009)

Data Coding and Analysis

The authors manually coded the final set of articles to identify and extract relevant information. The matrix method by Garrard (2017) was followed for this phase. The “matrix” itself is a table that contains key pieces of information extracted from each source or article. Typically, rows represent individual articles, and columns represent categories of information that are important for the review. In our study, a set of columns was created through collaborative discussions between authors. The following columns were included: author, title, year of publication, abstract, keywords, subjects, country, research context, research methodology, level of analysis, sample size (ind), sample size (team), gender of sample, position of sample, definition of friendship, theory/framework, variables (independent variable, dependent variable, mediator, moderator, others), instrument & scale used to measure friendship, results summary, key implications/notable points, and additional notes.

To ensure the validity of the coding process, we began by selecting two sample papers, which we each coded independently. We then reviewed each other’s results and reached a consensus on the coding approach for the remaining papers. Each of us was responsible for coding a certain number of papers independently. Afterward, we cross-checked the matrix to clarify any unclear wording and reconcile discrepancies in our approach to ensure consistency. For example, during the coding process, one of the authors recorded research contexts in a specific manner (e.g., general work environment, research projects, team assignments), while others categorized different situations under a single category, “organizational context.” We agreed that elaborating on research contexts was beneficial, so we revisited some papers to provide specific explanations. Finally, upon completing the matrix, the first author conducted a comprehensive review to extract themes, which were then finalized through mutual discussions. The themes found will be discussed in the findings section.

Findings

In this section, we report the key findings from our systematic review. First, the descriptive findings about the included 36 studies are drawn from the review of the studies as presented in Appendix A. Next, definitions of friendship, theories, and measurement of friendship in the included studies are examined. Lastly, our analyses reveal the positive effects of friendship in a team or group and the divergent effects of friendship based on different contexts.

Overview of Included Studies: Descriptive Findings

The descriptive findings of the included 36 studies are summarized based on research methodology, participants, level of analysis, geographical locations, types of organizations, and target group. As for research design and methodology, the included papers contain two theoretical and 34 empirical studies. Among 34 empirical studies, most studies, except for two qualitative studies, adopted a quantitative method such as statistical or social network analysis through panel data, self-reported survey, and experiment. Most studies paid attention to short-term team or group projects in either corporations or higher education, while a few studies examined the entire employees’ perspectives on friendship and ties, so that most employees or team members in the limited period participated in the studies. Lastly, in terms of the level of analysis among 34 empirical studies, 20 studies were analyzed on a team-level, while 14 studies were reviewed on individual or pair-level. Specifically, 19 studies also considered gender differences; thus, they provided research results different by gender.

Those empirical studies also covered various geological locations: 13 studies in North America (e.g., Canada, U.S.), 12 studies from Asian and Oceanian countries (e.g., Australia, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan), 11 studies from European countries (e.g., France, Germany, Italy, Netherland, Norway, Spain, United Kingdom), and the two studies conducted in multiple countries (e.g., U.S. and Jordan, U.S. and China). In addition, the studies were conducted in a variety of organization settings in both industry and public sector organizations, including large corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises, startups, non-profit organizations, and higher education institutions. This diverse range of research contexts promoted a deeper understanding of how friendship impacts team or group outcomes in various organizational settings.

Definitions of Friendship

Most included studies adopted the concept of friendship and defined friendship by adopting the definitions from existing studies (See Table 1). Some studies, however, provided their own interpretations. For instance, Bhardwaj et al. (2015) describe friendship as a deeper informal and personal relationship. Xing defines that “workplace friendship, also known as an informal interpersonal relationship at work, is a close and voluntary bond between coworkers that differs from the formal one, such as leader subordinate or instrumental. Workplace friendship serves both socio-emotional and utilitarian purposes in fostering a productive and friendly work environment” (2022, p. 2–3).

Table 1.

Definitions Adopted in the Included Studies

Authors	Definitions
Berman et al. (2002)	High team workplace friendship is characterized by employees sharing information, discussing problems freely, and providing mutual support and assistance.
Berscheid and Reis (1998)	Friendships are often formed between individuals who share similar interests, attitudes, core values, backgrounds, and traits, facilitating easier and preferred communication.
Chung et al. (2018)	Friendship is defined by a strong tendency for empathy, understanding, and validation between individuals.
Gilbert and Karahalios (2009)	Friendship ties are characterized by intimacy, intensity, and frequency of interaction.
Jehn and Shah (1997)	Friendship refers to voluntary, mutually satisfying, and positive relations between individuals.
Maisonneuve and Lamy (1993)	Friendship ties involve selection and attachment based on varying levels of personal, affective, and normative dimensions, distinguishing them from other forms of interpersonal ties.
Ren et al. (2015)	Friendship ties are positive linkages between team members that involve the exchange of social support and the provision of a sense of belonging.

In addition, half of the reviewed studies utilized ties or closeness to characterize friendship. In those studies, most of them compared strong ties with weak ties to clearly present the concept of social ties. Strong ties are characterized by the mutual exchange of social resources, trust, social inclusion among members, enhanced communication, and cooperation. In contrast, weak ties are more likely to be instrumental and less emotionally involved with members, which promotes project task implementation (Hood et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2021). Additionally, “prior tie” refers to formerly formulated relationships between members before the project began (Buvik & Rolfsen, 2015). On a related note, Oztop et al. (2018) adopted closeness as a measure of perceived connectedness with others, which is similar in meaning to weak ties.

These definitions can be grouped into three categories: (1) emotionally grounded definitions that emphasize empathy and mutual validation (e.g., Chung et al., 2018; Jehn & Shah, 1997); (2) functionally oriented definitions that focus on exchanging knowledge and support (e.g., Berman et al., 2002; Ren et al., 2015); and (3) tie-based definitions that distinguish between strong and weak ties, often drawing on social network theory (e.g., Gilbert & Karahalios, 2009; Wu et al., 2021). These definitional distinctions can inform research in different ways, as emotion-based definitions may be more applicable in studies of psychological safety or team cohesion, while function-based or tie-based definitions can be adopted for performance-oriented or network-analytic approaches.

Overall, despite the different terms used to define friendship in various studies, friendship can generally be described as a social relationship involving a connection and interaction with others, characterized by a willingness to provide mutual support and share emotions and values. Individuals who form friendships within a team or group are likely to improve mutual communication and exchange social support, which may significantly contribute to synergy effects and enhance team or group performance.

Theoretical Perspectives

The articles utilized psychological or sociological theories to explain the phenomena of which the authors had inquiries, which are also proactively used in HRD. 33 theories applied to the included studies can be categorized into three theoretical perspectives for a friendship research framework (See Table 2). These theoretical perspectives illustrate different approaches to understanding friendship in team dynamics. The dominance of the social network perspective indicates that existing research has promoted the structure and dynamics of social relationships, whereas the other friendship studies have adopted the perspectives of how individual subjects behave and learn through friendship.

Table 2.

Theoretical Perspectives of the Included Studies

Theoretical perspectives	Focus	Major theories
Social relationship perspective (64%, 21)	• Examines the structure and dynamics of social relationships • Emphasizes group dynamics and intergroup relations	• Social network theory • Social capital theory • Social ledger theory • Social exchange theory • Social cognitive theory • Social identity theory • Social categorization theory • Social interdependence theory • Intergroup contact theory • Groupthink model • Allophilia theory
Behavioral and motivational perspective (27%, 9)	• Explores individual psychological processes and behavior in social contexts • Examines factors that drive behavior and resource management in organizations	• Self-monitoring theory • Self-verification theory • Behavioral decision theory • Conservation of resources theory • Resource allocation theory • Affective events theory • Agency theory • Contract theory • Theory of motivated information processing in groups
Learning and information perspective (9%, 3)	• Delves into knowledge acquisition, information processing, and learning within organizations	• Input-mediator-output (IMO) model • Collective information processing theory • Organizational learning theory

Within the social network perspective, it is notable that two main theories – social network theory and social capital theory – were most frequently utilized throughout the reviewed studies. Social network theory is the theoretical lens to investigate how an individual or team’s behavior is influenced by embedded relationships (Li et al., 2017). This social network theory explains the relationship in the included studies between current or dissolved friendships and friendship quality (Buliga et al., 2020), team friendship density and team performance change (Clarke et al., 2022), friendship tie and team performance (Ren et al., 2015), and community embeddedness and turnover intention (Sahoo et al., 2024).

Social capital theory, on the other hand, is more focused on accessing resources through friendship or ties (Portes, 1998). In other words, people tend to spend their time and resources on developing social relationships under the assumption that they will have benefits through the relationships (Shazi et al., 2015). Based on social capital theory, some studies attempted to answer the research questions: the relationship between trust and idea generation (Shazi et al., 2015), informal network and instructional support (Woodland & Mazur, 2019), and the effect of communication tie on the relationship between Informational diversity task performance (Zhang & Huai, 2016). Along with social network theory and social capital theory, a variety of theories were applied to the research contexts and phenomena, although each was used only once.

Measurement of Friendship and Dependent Variables

In order to measure friendship, most studies adopted a self-reported questionnaire in three different ways: (a) selection of a close friend or acquaintance (e.g., Bahns, 2019; Buliga et al., 2020; Chiu et al., 2022; Hasan & Koning, 2019; Oztop et al., 2018), (b) a dichotomized friendship network by Henttonen (2010) (e.g., Bhardwaj et al., 2015; De Paola et al., 2019; Hood et al., 2017), and (c) degree of which participants consider closeness to each other in a team or group (e.g., Clarke et al., 2022; Kim et al., 2019; Ren et al., 2015; Xing, 2022). For the specific purpose of workplace friendship, the Two-Dimensional Workplace Friendship Scale of Nielsen et al. (2000) was used to measure friendship opportunity and prevalence in the workplace (e.g., Chang et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2022). On the other hand, Howlett and his colleagues (2023) created a new scale to measure friendship with more concise dimensions, including extraversion, intimacy, positive group identification, and negative group identification, named the Friendship Habits Questionnaire. Along with the different terminology, such as tie, that was adopted in several studies, levels of prior ties were measured by questionnaires about the intensity of group members' former relationships (e.g., Korol, 2019; Riccobono et al., 2016; Van Der Wege et al., 2021). Overall, although items in each measurement may vary, most studies adopted affective self-reported scales rather than observations to ask how close team or group members were to each other during the project or whether they knew each other before the project.

In addition to measurement for friendship, levels of team or group performance were assessed: task outcomes using Cohen’s d effect sizes (Chung et al., 2018); team performance over time using Vinokur-Kaplan’s 5-item scale (Clarke et al., 2022); the number of processes completed by the team in 30 minutes (Ding et al., 2024); team performance using a 1-to-5 scale (1 = poor, 5 = outstanding) on 10 dimensions related to achieving team goals (Ren et al., 2015); turnover intention (Sahoo et al., 2024); subordinates’ task performance on an 11-item scale (Tsui et al., 1997) and creative performance on a 4-item scale (Tierney et al., 1999) evaluated by supervisors (Zhang & Huai, 2016). Different from measurement for friendship, levels of team or group performance were measured by a third party or facilitators such as supervisors, researchers, and instructors; however, measurement rarely includes objective results such as scores from tests or financial achievement.

Positive Effects of Friendship in Team or Group

Many included studies examine the positive effects of friendship as an independent variable on team performance and team effectiveness in team or group projects. However, most studies took into account more variables related to personal background and features of tasks to find out complicated dynamics, including mediators (e.g., task-related or relationship-related conflict) or moderators (e.g., task interdependence, team advice density, group members’ personal traits, group members’ interpersonal ties, multicultural personality dispositions). Commonly in workplace settings, friendship is positively associated with task performance (Chung et al., 2018) and project success. (Zeng et al., 2022). Friendship ties also resolve the issues of faultlines of subgroups, which improves team performance (Ren et al., 2015). In addition, even in virtual and remote working environments, inter-team tie creation and reactivation are positively related to job performance (Wu et al., 2021). In academia, co-authors’ networks have been proven to be beneficial for team knowledge sharing and creation (Li et al., 2017). Social ties in a school project not only help group members reduce free-riding issues but also improve knowledge spillover between group members (De Paola et al., 2019).

Furthermore, friendship plays a significant role in mediating or moderating the relationship among variables in the workplace in a positive way. When the level of workplace friendship is higher, the positive relationship between healthy perfectionism and innovative behavior (Chang et al., 2016) or person-organization fit and self-verification perceptions (Kim et al., 2019) is stronger. As for ethical behaviors, workplace friendship weakens the relationship between ethical conflicts and team knowledge hiding (Xing, 2022). Lee and his colleagues also revealed friendship’s contribution to workplace learning, given that coworker socializing (i.e., friendship) incorporated with fun activities and manager support has a positive impact on employees’ informal learning (2022). Overall, friendship also indirectly contributes to developing the attitude and behavior of employees in the workplace, which may result in team or organizational performance positively.

Team Composition Dynamics

Different from the findings above, identifying the positive effects of friendship formulated during the projects in a team or group, some studies revealed that the effects of friendship vary depending on the context manipulated by each research.

Divergent Effects of Friendship Based on the Role of Prior Friendship Ties

This study discovered the role of friendship ties as a salient theme through this systematic review. Along with the positive impacts of friendship, prior friendship ties among team members also contribute to developing mutual trust in the early stage (Buvik & Rolfsen, 2015). In this vein, ties after the completion of team projects are still maintained among team members so that former team members share information, resources, and support based on ties (Maloney et al., 2019).

On the other hand, prior ties can have negative impacts on team or group performance in terms of limiting team creativity and interaction, conflict management, and communication bias. Prior closeness among team members who are likely to have high perspectives taking from each other has a negative influence on group creativity (Oztop et al., 2018). Prior friendship ties can also limit critical and creative thinking in a group. Since those who have strong prior friendships with group members are likely to chase a cohesive group, groupthink easily emerges, which discourages individuals’ critical thinking (Riccobono et al., 2016). Hasan and Koning also emphasized that prior social ties finally limit the extension of interactions with non-friends, resulting in less peer effects on each other for organizational performance (2019). In addition, according to D’hont et al. (2016), in entrepreneurial teams, although pre-existing friendship helps the emergence of business ideas and initiatives in the pre-launch phases, it is not influential in stimulating the motivation to set up a business in the launch stages.

Close friends in a team or group also present lower performance when relationship conflicts occur during the project, whereas those help non-friends improve team performance (Hood et al., 2017). In terms of communication effectiveness, those who have prior friendship ties tend to overestimate opinions and interests shared by close partners as similar to theirs and be overly confident in communication, which causes communication bias (Van Der Wege et al., 2021). Overall, different from friendships formed during task taking, prior friendship ties may have a disadvantages on team performance.

Cross-Group Friendship and Valuing Diversity

Studies examining cross-group friendships have highlighted the linkage between cross-group friendships and positive diversity attitudes. For instance, Korol (2019) assessed cross-group friendships by asking Caucasian/White participants about the number of their close friends who were African American. The study found that cross-group friendships were positively associated with allophilia, which is a positive attitude toward outgroups. This relationship was stronger for individuals who scored low on open-mindedness but high on social initiative. On the other hand, Bahns (2019) discovered that valuing diversity increased the likelihood of forming racially diverse friendships in racially heterogeneous communities and fostered religiously diverse friendships more effectively in smaller communities than in larger ones. Valuing diversity was also related to more similarity of attitude in larger communities than in small communities. While these studies establish a clear link between cross- or heterogeneous group friendships and positive attitudes toward diversity, the direction of this relationship still remains uncertain.

Discussion

This study aims to review and synthesize the existing literature on friendship within a team or group by adopting a systematic literature review method. In this section, we interpret the major findings through the lens of the field of HRD, and also address the salient implications for contribution to HRD studies and practice.

First, the analysis reveals a variety of definitions of friendship in a team or group. In general, friendship is a social relationship (tie, connection, and interaction) with others, having a desire to provide mutual support and sharing emotions and values. If team members acquire friendship with one another, those teams tend to produce higher and better team or group performance in organizations. However, the review also shows that many studies identified the role of friendship with the specified definition of it (e.g., Ding et al., 2024; Hasan & Koning, 2019; Hood et al., 2017). In terms of the strength of friendship, friendship can be categorized into strong and weak relationships: strong ties are associated with high levels of social inclusion among members, whereas weak ties involve less emotional interaction but tend to be more task-oriented in nature (Hood et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2021). Given that HRD scholars and practitioners tend to pay more attention to team performance from completion of the tasks as the outcome of the HRD interventions, the perspective of weak ties, which is more instrumental, may be more useful for measuring friendship in the workplace.

Next, the included studies primarily adopted two theories: social network theory and social capital theory, which emphasize accessing resources through friendship (Portes, 1998). From a social capital perspective, friendship can be a key driver of team learning and collaboration. Although the reviewed studies did not directly address specific HRD interventions from social capital perspectives, mentoring and onboarding can help build trust and reciprocal exchange and are theoretically relevant for enhancing team dynamics and building a learning organization. For instance, Beals et al. (2021) framed mentoring relationships as a form of social capital, emphasizing the role of trust, reciprocity, and access to resources in developmental contexts. Similarly, social network theory offers insight into how HRD practitioners might apply network-based strategies, such as network mapping, to strengthen interpersonal connections and improve knowledge sharing (HRBrain.ai, 2024). These connections, while not explicitly discussed in the reviewed literature, reflect the broader applicability of both theories to HRD practice.

The included studies also show the evolution of friendship measurement. Traditionally, most studies adopted self-reported scales to ask how close team or group members were with others during the project (e.g., Clarke et al., 2022; Kim et al., 2019; Ren et al., 2015) or a dichotomized friendship network (e.g., Bhardwaj et al., 2015; De Paola et al., 2019; Hood et al., 2017). It is fortunate that new scales have recently been developed to measure friendship with more concise dimensions, including extraversion, intimacy, positive group identification, and negative group identification (Howlett et al., 2023). This detailed measurement helps research participants or team members in the workplace reduce the ambiguity of the concept of friendship and examine the level of friendship more concisely, which contributes to building possible variables.

In addition, the review shows that most studies took into account more variables, such as mediators and moderators related to personal background and features of tasks (e.g., De Paola et al., 2019; Korol, 2019; Li et al., 2017). Friendship also plays a significant role in mediating or moderating the relationship among variables in the workplace in a positive way (e.g., Chang et al., 2016; Kim et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2022). This finding provides valuable insights into friendship research associated with team or group performance in HRD, such that the effects of friendship should be examined in various aspects to discover complicated dynamics in the workplace.

On the other hand, through the analyses, we summarize that the influences of prior friendship ties are different from the positive effects of friendship formed during the projects in a team or group. Whereas a few studies identified that prior friendship ties contributed to mutual trust (Buvik & Rolfsen, 2015) and post-support (Maloney et al., 2019), the other studies demonstrated that prior ties could have negative impacts on team or group performance based on the limits of team creativity and interaction, conflict management, and communication bias (e.g., Oztop et al., 2018; Riccobono et al., 2016; Van Der Wege et al., 2021). Overall, unlike friendships formed during task taking, prior friendship may not be beneficial for enhancing team or group effectiveness all the time, which implies that prior friendship ties need to be seriously considered or controlled in friendship studies in HRD.

Although the findings significantly tend to enrich the theoretical underpinnings of friendship in HRD as mentioned above, it was surprising that the literature rarely covered a wide range of research contexts related to team or group performance. First, the procedure of team or group formation has been underestimated. Although a few included studies manipulated team formation as friend team or non-friend team considering their pre-friendship ties (De Paola et al., 2019; Van Der Wege et al., 2021), the roles and effects of friendship following different operations in the stages of team development were overlooked. Tuckman and Jensen (1977) explained a small group dynamic. They paid attention to two realms of group development, including interpersonal relationships and task activities, and identified four stages for effective group functioning: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Group members have different assignments of two realms to resolve in each stage (Miller, 2009). In each stage, team members connected by friendship ties tend to pay more attention to relational ties since relations are valued social capital (Hood et al., 2017). In contrast, non-friends are more likely to focus on task-related issues than friends (Rispens et al., 2011). In particular, norm-setting is essential for ties among group members to enhance trust in each other in an early stage (Buvik & Rolfsen, 2015). Considering the provision of the appropriate HRD interventions to promote friendship, it is necessary to discover the changes in the role of friendship depending on each team formation and development stage.

In a similar vein to team formation, more contextual factors such as social diversity and the virtual workplace should be considered. As identified in the findings, Bahns (2019) and Korol (2019) examined a clear link between cross- or heterogeneous group friendships and positive attitudes toward diversity. On the other hand, Zhang and Huai (2016) suggested that social diversity, including age, gender, race, and nationality, may cause the hindrance of group progress and negative outcomes for the group. However, there still has been a lack of consideration of social diversity in the friendship literature based on team or group effectiveness. Considering that resistance to individual diversity pertaining to unconscious motivation should be reduced for the full integration of employees (Wiggins-Romesburg & Githens, 2018), reviews of diversity are required for HRD studies. From our initial search, we found some studies related to sexual identity (e.g., Calcagno, 2016; Magrath & McCormack, 2023) and ethnicity/race (Leszczensky et al., 2019; Northcutt Bohmert & DeMaris, 2015) that were not met with our inclusion criteria, which may provide an insight into social diversity with friendship research in HRD.

In addition, although employees have been more exposed to virtual or remote working environments since COVID-19, only one study among the included literature has partially examined friendship in a virtual team based on the number of interactions (Wu et al., 2021). Various workplace settings besides virtual teams should be considered since those environmental factors have a huge possibility to moderate the execution and development of friendships. It was also concerning that there was a lack of discussion on fostering and facilitating such friendships within teams or groups while controlling the potential adverse effects. If explored, this could significantly inform practice, which makes it valuable for future researchers to consider these additional aspects in friendship studies.

Figure 2 presents an integrated theoretical framework for understanding friendship in teams and groups within the field of HRD. This framework is based on the IMOI model (Ilgen et al., 2005) and grounded in the findings of our systematic literature review and synthesizes core variables along with measurements, developmental stages, and theoretical underpinnings that shape how workplace friendship influences team or group performance. In particular, social network theory and social capital theory are incorporated, as they highlight how individuals tend to invest their time and resources in developing social relationships to benefit from others, and how employees exchange their resources, such as knowledge or skills, to develop competencies, along with friendship serving as a key mechanism. In this framework, friendship is also reconceptualized as an input and a dynamic process, departing from previous studies that tended to treat friendship as either a static or emergent state. Four team development stages are also incorporated; a prominent approach since friendship has infrequently been examined regarding team evolution over time. Overall, this integrative approach provides a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the impacts of friendship on team or group performance in the field of HRD.

Figure 2.

Proposition of Theoretical Framework of Friendship Research in HRD

Implications for HRD Practice

This systematic review also has practical implications for managers and HRD practitioners. It is obvious that many included friendships have a positive impact on team performance and effectiveness in team or group projects. To establish a friendly organizational culture, HRD executives may encourage top management and innovation directors in the organizations to coach their subgroups or subordinates to improve their friendship with each other. HRD practitioners can provide team development interventions, such as team building programs, for those who are assigned to a new project in their early stages. These programs can promote friendship and reduce resistance to new members. In addition, former team members after the completion of the short-term task are likely to maintain their friendship ties, contributing to knowledge and resource sharing with each other. Thus, managers should be aware of social network development with carefulness of team assignments for employees to expand their human capital.

On the other hand, managers also consider that prior ties may have negative impacts on team performance and effectiveness based on team creativity and interaction, conflict management, and communication bias. In order to avoid those negative effects, managers need to use detailed measurements such as the Friendship Habits Questionnaire (Howlett et al., 2023) to understand pre-friendship ties before team assignments. After selecting friends and non-friends in a balanced manner, managers should facilitate their relationship considering the difference between strong and weak ties. In this process, HRD practitioners may develop and provide them with leadership development workshops, such as skills to improve friendships following team development stages embedded in leadership development or project management programs. They can further mitigate these risks by offering early detection tools such as peer feedback systems or structured team assessments. These tools may help monitor team dynamics and identify signs of imbalance.

At the same time, we recommend that HRD practitioners leverage the positive effects of friendships to help build an inclusive culture within the organization. It is notable that Korol (2019) reported that cross-group friendships can lead to positive attitudes toward outgroup members. This emphasizes friendship’s potential role in promoting awareness, understanding, and support among diverse groups. In addition to implementing awareness programs, offering opportunities for employees to build friendships may contribute more effectively to creating an inclusive organizational culture.

Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research

We are aware of the limitations of this research. Along with the implications for HRD studies, the analyses show that the literature rarely covers a wide range of research contexts related to team or group performance. A more integrative approach is required to provide a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the impacts of friendship on team or group performance in the field of HRD, considering the changes in the role of friendship depending on each team formation and development stage, and contextual factors such as social diversity and virtual workplace. This synthesized and integrative research agenda should be verified through an empirical method in future research.

Additionally, we acknowledge that our adoption of the IMOI model as a foundational framework might have constrained our ability to fully capture the nuanced and potentially nonlinear nature of workplace friendship, given the linear characteristics of the model. Future research should critically assess the appropriateness of the IMOI framework or explore complementary theoretical lenses to better reflect the complexities involved in workplace friendship.

In the included studies, the definition or identification of tasks and rewards for performance tends to be ambiguous. Although some studies identified features of tasks by adopting task independence or creativity, most literature simply named “task” or “project”. The level of difficulty or purpose of tasks may also affect team members’ motivation to or conflict with the tasks, which leads to different impacts of friendship. In addition, team members’ motivation and attitude towards the tasks associated with friendship vary depending on the types of rewards after the completion of the tasks, including positive or negative reinforcement and subjective or objective success, which may be another contextual factor related to friendship.

In addition, the empirical literature reviewed in this study covered various geographical locations, and our analyses did not find any significant differences in the effects of friendship across cultures or countries. However, the perception of friendship may be inherently different depending on culture. For example, people in collectivist cultures often recognize friendship as a relational tie, whereas those in individualist cultures may regard that friendship in the workplace as more instrumental. Therefore, future studies should either provide a clear definition of friendship in team or group contexts or recruit participants from diverse locations and use the integrative framework proposed in this study to examine cultural differences in the effects of friendship.

Finally, virtual team environments, which have become increasingly common, may fundamentally alter how friendship develops and influences team processes and outcomes, as we included the theoretical framework of friendship research in HRD. Future research should empirically investigate how digital communication tools, physical distance, and hybrid work settings shape the formation and function of workplace friendships in virtual teams.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Suhyung Lee

Hyerim Cho

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was funded by the Augustana Research and Artist Fund (ARAF).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Appendix

Appendix: The Review Matrix for Friendship Literature from 2015 to 2024

No.	Author and Year	Methodology/method	Level of analysis	Country	Friendship or other term	Theory	Summary of study
1	Bahns (2019)	Quant (HLM)	Ind., pairs	U.S.	Friendship	Intergroup contact theory	Valuing diversity predicted diverse friendships, especially in race and religion, depending on community size and racial heterogeneity. It also increased attitude similarity in larger communities but not in smaller ones.
2	Bhardwaj et al. (2015)	Quant (SNA)	Ind.	Canada	Close friendship network	Self-monitoring theory	High self-monitoring individuals gain lasting in-degree centrality in general social networks but experience diminishing benefits in close friendship networks over time. This pattern is influenced by how relationship partners react differently based on self-monitoring levels in each network type.
3	Buliga et al. (2020)	Quant (HLM)	Ind.	Canada	Friendship	Social network theory	Current friendships, both cross-group and same-group, showed more closeness, similarity, and social network integration than dissolved friendships. These qualities may contribute to cross-group friendship stability.
4	Buvik & Rolfsen (2015)	Case study (interview)	Ind.	Norway	Tie		Positive prior ties among team members significantly influence the early development of trust by facilitating the establishment of integrative work practices, open communication, and clear role expectations. Shared experiences from prior projects help teams develop a common philosophy and norms of behavior, thereby enhancing trust.
5	Chang et al. (2016)	Quant (HLM)	Team	Taiwan	Friendship	Social cognitive theory	High team workplace friendship strengthens the positive relationship between healthy perfectionism and innovative behavior, but weakens the positive relationship between unhealthy perfectionism and job burnout.
6	Chiu et al. (2022)	Quant (SEM)	Team	Taiwan	Friendship tie	Social ledger theory	Leader humility was linked to improved team-helping norms and effectiveness by reducing hindrance density. Controlling for transformational leadership made the link between leader humility and friendship density insignificant, but the connection to lower hindrance density remained significant.
7	Chung et al. (2018)	Meta analysis			Friendship		Friendship significantly boosts group task performance, with stronger effects in larger groups and on tasks requiring high output. However, there was no performance benefit on tasks that require a single or high-quality output.
8	Clarke et al. (2022)	Quant (Regression, interaction)	Team	Spain	Friendship	Social network theory	Leader multiplex centrality, combining both advice and friendship ties, predicted team performance change over two years. This effect was particularly strong in teams with dense adversarial networks or sparse friendship networks, which highlights the importance of leaders integrating both roles
9	Derfler-Rozin et al. (2021)	Quant (time-lagged field study, experiment)	Ind.	U.S.	Friendship		Managers who are friends with their employees face a tension because they want to bend rules to benefit a friend, but doing so could strain relationships with other employees. When managers adopt the group perspective, they view consistent application of allocation criteria as fairer.
10	D’hont et al. (2016)	Qual (interview, survey)	Ind.	France	Friendship tie		Friendship plays a key role in the formation and development of entrepreneurial teams and ventures. Strong pre-existing friendship ties significantly influenced the emergence of the business idea and the motives for founding the business, while weak ties sometimes influenced the idea’s emergence but not the motivation for starting the business.
11	Ding et al. (2024)	Quant (ANOVA, PROCESS)	Team	China	Tie	Organizational learning theory, social network theory, input-mediator-output (IMO) model	Centralized communication networks perform better with weak tie strength, whereas decentralized networks excel with strong tie strength. Additionally, knowledge sharing and team resilience mediate performance when tie strength is strong.
12	Hasan & Koning (2019)	Quant (experiment, logistic and Quasi-Poisson Regressions)	Team	India	Tie		Teams without prior ties benefit from peer effects, improving their prototypes with nearby teams’ performance increases. In contrast, teams with many prior ties interact less with nearby peers, which limits their ability to leverage peer effects for performance.
13	Hood et al. (2017)	Quant (hierarchical Regression)	Team	U.S.	Friendship	Conservation of resources theory	Relationship conflicts occurring among team members who are friends have a negative impact on team performance, whereas those occurring between non-friends have a positive impact on team performance.
14	Howlett et al. (2023)	Quant (CFA)	Ind	Europe	Friendship		The friendship habits questionnaire (FHQ) measures individual differences in group versus dyadic-oriented friendships through four dimensions: Extraversion, intimacy, positive group identification, and negative group identification. It effectively predicts the size of friendship groups people enjoy, which demonstrates strong construct validity.
15	Kim et al. (2019)	Quant (HLM)	Ind., pairs	South Korea	Friendship	Self-verification theory	Employees’ perceptions of person-organization fit and self-verification are positively linked, especially when coworker friendship is high. Self-verification also significantly boosts job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors.
16	Lee et al. (2022)	Quant (HLM)	Team	Taiwan	Friendship	Social interdependence theory	Workplace fun positively impacts informal learning, with organized activities, coworker socializing, and manager support. In Taiwanese context, fostering genuine workplace friendships and a supportive climate is crucial for maximizing the benefits of workplace fun
17	Li et al. (2017)	Quant (panel data, Regression)	Team	U.S.	Social networks	Social network theory, collective information processing theory	Tie stability affects team knowledge creation in an inverted U-shape, whereas structural holes in the co-author network hinder knowledge sharing and diffusion. When structural holes are few, the relationship between tie stability and knowledge creation exhibits a clearer U-shape.
18	Maloney et al. (2019)	Quant (linear and ordered logit mixed effects models)	Team	U.S.	Tie	Social network theory	Team relational capital positively affects tie vitality, and this relationship is strengthened by higher team-level advice network density. Dyad similarity also influences tie vitality, depending on demographic characteristics.
19	Marler & Stanley (2018)	Literature review			Friendship tie	Social identity theory	Not all friendships in family firms impact nonfamily employees equally. Specifically, whether a family friend is in the family in-group or out-group affects nonfamily employees’ organizational identification and subsequent behaviors.
20	Obeidat & Muhammad (2021)	Quant (ANOVA, SNA)	Team	U.S./Jordan	Communication tie		In Jordanian teams, communication frequency decreases with physical distance but increases with local visual accessibility. Additionally, team members of the same role and gender communicate more frequently than those with different roles or genders, reflecting the impact of social hierarchy.
21	Oztop et al. (2018)	Quant (experiment, ANOVA)	Team	Germany	Closeness	Theory of motivated information processing in groups	Closeness positively affects group creativity, whereas perspective taking has a negative effect. However, when combined, high closeness and perspective taking together negatively impact group creativity.
22	Ren et al. (2015)	Quant (Regression)	Team	U.S.	Friendship tie	Social network theory	Informal networks influence faultline effects by either enhancing or diminishing team performance. Team performance improved when friendship ties bridged faultline subgroups but worsened when animosity ties did so.
23	Riccobono et al. (2016)	Quant (experiment, survey, HLM)	Team	Netherland	Tie	Groupthink model	Groupthink concurrence-seeking behavior (GTB) impacts business process reengineering projects, with personal traits and interpersonal ties moderating this effect. Perceived control, conscientiousness, and interpersonal evaluation reduce GTB’s negative impact, whereas confidence and previous relationships worsen it.
24	Sahoo et al. (2024)	Quant (linear models with cluster-Robust standard errors)	Team	India	Social networks	Social network theory	There is no consistent main effect of community embeddedness on turnover intentions. However, inclusion and exclusion centrality, as well as team exclusion density, weaken the impact of community embeddedness on turnover intentions.
25	Shazi et al. (2015)	Quant (multiple Regression quadratic assignment procedure)	Team	Australia	Tie	Social capital theory	Ability and benevolence influence tie formation for both idea generation and realization, with integrity affecting only idea generation. Lack of benevolence reduces the importance of ability in partner selection, whereas high benevolence enhances it; lack of integrity makes ability less relevant or negative in choosing partners.
26	Vestal & Danneels (2022)	Quant (panel data, logistic Regression)	Team	U.S.	Tie		Technological distance between clusters has an inverted-U relationship with breakthrough likelihood. Teams with high inter-cluster tie density are better at leveraging diverse technological knowledge for breakthroughs, while those with high intra-cluster density benefit less from this diversity.
27	Woodland & Mazur (2019)	Quant (SNA, multinomial logistic Regression)	Ind.	U.S.	Tie	Social capital theory	Most teachers’ informal instructional support ties aligned with shared membership on formal teams created by administrators. Teachers who reported strong positive influences from colleagues also participated in formal teams and believed team collaboration improved their instructional practice.
28	Wu et al. (2021)	Quant (panel data, generalized linear mixed model)	Team	China	Social networks	Resource allocation theory	During a crisis, job performance is positively related to the creation and reactivation of inter-team ties, but not to intra-team ties. A framework for understanding the role of organizational networks in individual information processing was suggested.
29	Xing (2022)	Quant (partial least squares-structural equation modeling)	Team	China	Friendship	Social exchange theory, affective events theory	There was a significant and positive relationship between ethical value congruence and knowledge hiding. Also, there was a relationship between lack of shared ethical priorities and knowledge hiding. Workplace friendship moderated the relationship between ethical conflicts and team knowledge hiding.
30	Yoo & Reed (2015)	Quant (panel data, Regression)	Team	U.S.	Tie	Agency theory, behavioral decision theory	Top managers’ external ties and board composition influence firm strategy, with intra-industry experience leading to resource-imitation and cross-industry experience leading to resource-substitution strategies. Separation of CEO and board chair duties and boards with many outsiders reduce managers’ tendency to choose familiar, safe strategies.
31	Yu & Shea (2024)	Quant (time-lagged design, experiment)	Ind.	U.S./China	Tie	Social network theory	Women with high-status network contacts may be perceived as less communal, which can lower their status among peers. Signaling a group-oriented goal can mitigate these social perceptual costs, although the effect of high-status contacts for men is less consistent.
32	Zeng et al. (2022)	Quant (SEM)	Ind.	China	Tie	Social capital theory	In megaprojects, strong ties enhance task-related conflict but reduce relationship-related conflict, while weak ties increase inter-team conflict. Task-related conflict positively affects project success, whereas relationship-related conflict negatively impacts it, with the strength of ties influencing project success through these conflicts.
33	Zhang & Huai (2016)	Quant (HLM)	Team	China	Communication tie	Social capital theory	Informational diversity impacts individual task and creative performance through communication ties, while social diversity does not. Social diversity does not influence communication-tie development or individual performance.
34	De Paola et al. (2019)	Quant (experiment, Regression)	Ind.	Italy	Tie	Contract theory	Students in socially connected teams perform better on both team and individual exam parts, with the benefits of social ties lasting beyond the experiment. Team performance was not significantly affected by gender composition or the difference in ability between team members.
35	Korol (2019)	Quant (HLM)	Ind.	U.S.	Friendship	Allophilia theory	Cross-group friendship was positively associated with allophilia, and the relationship was stronger for individuals who scored low on open-mindedness and high on social initiative.
36	Van Der Wege et al. (2021)	Quant (experiment)	Ind.	U.S.	Friendship	Social categorization theory	Through four experiments, participants consistently overestimated common ground with friends compared to strangers, including minimal group members and individuals who had a brief online chat. Both speakers and listeners, as well as minimal group pairs and chat partners, showed a tendency to overestimate perceived common ground with those they considered part of their in-group.

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Unpacking Friendship in Team Dynamics: A Systematic Review of Friendship From HRD Perspectives

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Methods

Systematic Literature Review

Data Coding and Analysis

Findings

Overview of Included Studies: Descriptive Findings

Definitions of Friendship

Theoretical Perspectives

Measurement of Friendship and Dependent Variables

Positive Effects of Friendship in Team or Group

Team Composition Dynamics

Divergent Effects of Friendship Based on the Role of Prior Friendship Ties

Cross-Group Friendship and Valuing Diversity

Discussion

Implications for HRD Practice

Limitations and Recommendations for Future Research

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Appendix

References