Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Read the June 2026 issue here.
Groups are a given in the modern organization, but they also fall short of expectations when they’re not, as some like to say, “in flow.” What does that mean? And how does a group step into the flow of effective collaboration?
Associate Professor and Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow Elizabeth (Bess) Rouse, together with collaborators, has devised a theoretical framework for investigating group flow. Things flow when members work seamlessly together and quickly add to each other’s contributions, as opposed to, say, dwelling on their own ideas and critiques. In their paper, “Group Flow: A Theory of Group Member Interactions in the Moment and Over Time,” published recently in Academy of Management Review, the scholars parse out the core elements of this process, including the timing of contributions and their afterflow.
Think of an SNL writing room where one writer floats a wild idea and another writer gamely keeps the thought in motion, adding to it and spurring momentum toward a successful script. Rouse et al. go beyond previous research by spotlighting such moment-by-moment interactions rather than just the overall patterns and outcomes of teamwork. These “temporal dynamics” give rise to group flow, which the authors conceptualize as “a state characterized by full, seemingly effortless attention, shared positive emotional arousal, and additive, swift contributions.”
