Table 2.

Representative sample of the strong and weak synergy literature stream in teams.

Prior research	Research questions	Sample	Number of teams	Treatment	Research design	Major findings
Carey and Laughlin (2012)	Are 3 person groups necessary and sufficient to perform better than the best individual on highly intellective tasks?	Students at University of Illinois	40404040	2 person team	Experimental study	The results suggest that groups of 3 members are necessary and sufficient to perform better than the best of an equivalent number of individuals on solving intellective problems. Empirical evidence for strong synergy
				3 person team4 person team5 person team
Volmer and Sonnentag (2011)	Do experts in task and team functions predict team performance over and above the team’s average expertise level?	Software development teams from 28 different organizations in Germany	29	Expert vs team performance	Longitudinal, multi-source data	Experts positively predicted team performance 12 months later over and above team’s average expertise level No evidence for synergetic effects
Sniezek (1989)	What is the relationship among individual predictive judgement accuracy, confidence, influence and group judgment?	Students MBA	18	Individual judgement vs group judgement	Longitudinal within subject design	Group judgements are significantly more accurate than mean or median individual judgements Empirical evidence for strong synergy
Vollrath et al. (1989)	Do groups recall and recognize information better than individuals across a variety of measures and decision conditions?	Student sample university of Illinois	161	Individual or group decisionIndividual or group memory performanceDecision-then-memory or memory-then decision task sequence	2x2x2 between subject factorial design	Groups recalled and recognized information better than individuals across a variety of measures and decision conditions Empirical evidence for synergetic effects
Taylor et al. (1958)	What is the effectiveness of group brainstorming?	Yale University undergraduate students	12	Individual vs group condition	Controlled experimental study	Interacting groups generated significantly fewer ideas than pooled individual ideas No evidence for synergetic effects in brainstorming tasks