Fig 1.
PRISMA diagram showing review search results, included articles, excluded articles and reasons for article exclusion.
Table 1.
Study types and descriptions of collaborations presented in reviewed articles.
Table 2.
Construct codes, percent of articles containing each construct code, and sample construct excerpts or excerpt summaries from articles included in the review.
Fig 2.
Consolidated Framework for Collaboration Research (CFCR) conceptual diagram synthesizing constructs that appeared in five or more of the articles included in the review.
Fig 3.
Causal loop diagram showing how several constructs identified in the review may relate to each other over time.
In a CLD, a change in a variable at the tail end of an arrow is said to cause a change in the variable at the head end of that same variable, all else equal (e.g., an increase in the number of patrons at a popular restaurant leads to an increase in the wait time for a table, all else being equal). The direction of change is indicated by polarity symbol on the arrowhead. If a change in one variable (e.g., an increase) causes a change in the same direction for the other variable (e.g., it also increases), the polarity is positive (+), or said to be in the “same” direction (s). If a change in once variable causes a change in the opposite direction (e.g., an increase in one variable leads to a decrease in another variable), the polarity is negative (-) or said to be in the “opposite” direction (o). An important feature of CLDs is their ability to show feedback loops, or connections between variables where a chain of variables end up “feeding back” to the starting variable, and thus changing it. A critical CLD symbol is the nature of feedback loops, designated as either reinforcing (R) if the polarity within a feedback loops indicates that a change in one direction will be perpetuated throughout the loop, or as balancing (B) if changes within variables counteract each other, leading to a steady state or oscillation between states.