Coaching as a Driver of Business Performance: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This research examines the impact of different types of coaching on organizations’ multidimensional business performance, addressing the lack of a consolidated, structured synthesis in the existing literature. Despite the widespread adoption of coaching as a developmental activity in organizational contexts, a cumulative perspective on its business performance outcomes has yet to emerge. To address this gap, a systematic review of peer-reviewed empirical studies published over a ten-year period was conducted, following the PRISMA protocol. This process resulted in the inclusion and analysis of fifty-one articles that met the established selection criteria. The findings reveal varying prevalence across five broad types of coaching, executive, leadership, managerial, team, and business, and four overarching business performance dimensions, operational efficiency, financial performance, return on investment, and customer experience optimization. Both classifications emerged inductively from the foundational research streams on coaching and business performance. The strongest and most consistently observed impact of coaching is on operational efficiency, primarily reflected in improvements in employee engagement, managerial behavior, communication, and teamwork. Evidence linking coaching to financial growth, return on investment, and customer experience has received comparatively less empirical attention; however, these outcomes may be interpreted as downstream implications of operational improvements. Regarding coaching types, managerial coaching is the most widely examined in the existing literature, whereas team coaching remains comparatively underrepresented. By synthesizing the current state of research on coaching and its organizational impact across diverse economic and industrial contexts, this study provides insights and guidance for scholars refining theory and evidence, and for practitioners designing and implementing coaching interventions.