## 3 Results
### Characteristics of the Studies  
In Figure 2, the graphical representation illustrates the number of articles chosen for comprehensive text review per year. Broadly speaking, an ascending trend is discernible in studies focused on critical success factors for continuous improvement over the years. It is worth highlighting that, in the latest period starting from 2019, there is a sustained upswing in investigations related to this thematic domain (66 articles from 2019 to 2022).  
Figure 1: Flowchart of the preliminary study selection process. Self-created based on PRISMA-ScR [9].  
Likewise, Figure 3 illustrates the publication categories of the retrieved articles, predominantly comprising journal articles (89%), with the remaining 11% attributed to conference proceedings.  
Furthermore, the studies selected for the analysis in this literature review (\(n=20\)) were categorized by database and publication type.  
As for the database, Figure 4 illustrates that 11 studies (55%) were retrieved from the Web of Science database, and 9 studies (45%) from Scopus.  
Similarly, in Figure 4, it is observed that the studies included in the analysis were almost entirely (95%) published in journals, while only 5% were conference proceedings.  
To identify the main areas of interest to which the selected articles belong after the screening procedure, as well as the connections between the concepts related to the research topic, a mapping of the bibliographic information was carried out with the support of VOSviewer software version 1.6.20 URL [[https://www.vosviewer.com](https://www.vosviewer.com)]([https://www.vosviewer.com](https://www.vosviewer.com)) (accessed on 21 December 2023). This software is a tool used to analyze and visualize literature through bibliometric networks using bibliographic information from scientific articles. Figure 5 presents the analysis of the applications with VOSviewer.  
Figure 3: Publication type of the retrieved articles by year. Own elaboration.  
Figure 2: Number of articles retrieved per year. Own elaboration.  
In Figure 5, it is observed that the map is mainly composed of three clusters, performance, implementation, and lean manufacturing, which means that these themes or keywords have been investigated much more among the analyzed articles.  
Due to its central position within the map, and the size of the node, we can affirm that the word with the greatest connection with respect to the other themes is the word performance.  
In turn, the blue cluster is the strongest, since it includes the largest nodes (performance, critical success factors (CSF), and continuous improvement), which confirms that the selected studies are quite related to the research topic since this literature review focuses  
Figure 4: Databases and publication types of the articles included in the review. Own elaboration.  
Figure 5: Analysis of the selected publications after screening, with at least 5 matches. Own elaboration.  
on identifying these CSFs that intervene in the performance of work teams (green cluster) in relation to continuous improvement.  
The information for the 20 selected studies for analysis is presented in Table 3, displaying the title, author, year, reference, and country for each article.