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The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of team resilience on different facets of effectiveness (team viability and quality of the group experience). Moreover, given the importance of team resilience for the organizational context, it was also our aim to contribute to the study of the conditions that promote team resilience, analyzing the role of transformational leadership. Finally, we examined whether the relationship between transformational leadership and team resilience stimulates positive team outcomes. Ninety teams (445 employees from 40 companies) were surveyed and path analysis was used in the test of the hypotheses. The results showed a positive direct effect of team resilience on both team viability and the quality of the group experience. Moreover, a positive relationship was also identified between transformational leadership and team resilience. Finally, support was found for the mediated effect of team resilience on the relationship between transformational leadership and the dimensions of team effectiveness considered. The findings of this study highlight the role of team resilience as an intervening process between transformational leadership and team effectiveness. Supervisors should promote team resilience, adopting transformational leadership behaviors, in order to contribute to increase team viability and the quality of the group experience.

This paper examines team learning behaviors within a nonlinear dynamical system (NDS) perspective. The present research is based on a sample of 36 project workgroups, where data were collected at two moments of their life cycle, with visual analogue scales. Using both the least squares method and maximum likelihood, it proposes a cusp catastrophe model for explaining team learning. The cusp model is superior to its linear alternatives and implements team culture as the asymmetry variable and team potency as bifurcation. The findings of cusp structure in the data support the existence of discontinuous shifts in learning behavior and furthermore a proposition that the punctuated equilibrium model (PEM) might be a reasonable model for describing group functioning, since it encompasses such sudden changes between distinct stages (attractors). A discussion on small group research is also provided by highlighting the nonlinear dynamics of team processes, along with further implications for research and practice.