Interpersonal Relationships in Entrepreneurial Team Research: a Meta-Analysis Using Advanced Computational Methods

Abstract

This study examines how interpersonal relationships are positioned within entrepreneurial team (ET) research, focusing on how relational themes such as trust, conflict, cohesion, diversity, and collaboration are distributed across dominant research streams. Moving beyond conventional literature reviews and performance-centred perspectives, the study provides a systematic, data-driven mapping of relational orientations in ET scholarship. Using three complementary text analysis techniques, namely topic modelling, term network analysis, and large language model (LLM)-assisted text extraction, the study examines 916 abstracts of peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference papers published between 1995 and 2025. This integrated approach enables multi-level analysis of a large corpus and the identification of latent research streams derived from the substantive focus of each study, followed by an examination of their term networks. Findings show that although nearly half of the publications address internal team functioning, relational constructs remain concentrated within a relatively isolated subset of research on team processes and team properties. In contrast, outward-looking research on investment, strategic growth, and international entrepreneurship largely omits explicit relational perspectives. Conflict, resilience, team reflexivity, team formation, team dynamics, transactive memory systems, and trust emerge as prominent relational constructs but are often isolated from ecosystem-level inquiry. Notably, ecosystem actors such as incubators and universities typically appear as contextual background rather than as influential agents shaping intra-team dynamics, suggesting a disconnect between ecosystem discourse and relational team mechanisms across multiple theoretical and empirical contexts. The study contributes to human-centred entrepreneurship research by offering a high-resolution analysis of relational concepts in ET scholarship. It clarifies how interpersonal relationships are presented in ET studies and identifies blind spots, particularly the limited integration of relational themes into ecosystem-level research. It also highlights opportunities to better integrate entrepreneurial ecosystem stakeholders, including academia, support organisations, policymakers, and industry actors, to strengthen collaboration, trust-building, and the development of resilient startup teams.