Francisco Gil Rodríguez

Small Group Research in Europe

After a long period of scarce resources and a long delay in new scientific results suffered as a consequence of recent Spanish history, research concerning groups has experienced a rapid development over the last 15 years of the 20th century—the result of the late but then clear institutionalization of psychology into university structure. Although most research has been carried out at the very heart of social psychology and along the traditional lines of the field, a significant growth in the study of groups and work teams in organizational contexts can now be highlighted, coinciding with the tendency detected internationally during the last years. Beyond the normalization of group research in Spain, it is necessary to point out its excessive dependency in both theory and methodology on models and tools elaborated throughout North America and Europe. The present review closes with the proposal of creating a European formative curriculum for group psychologists in order to unify and promote research withi...