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This paper presents a model of team learning and tests it in a multimethod field study. It introduces the construct of team psychological safety-a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking-and models the effects of team psychological safety and team efficacy together on learning and performance in organizational work teams. Results of a study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company, measuring antecedent, process, and outcome variables, show that team psychological safety is associated with learning behavior, but team efficacy is not, when controlling for team psychological safety. As predicted, learning behavior mediates between team psychological safety and team performance. The results support an integrative perspective in which both team structures, such as context support and team leader coaching, and shared beliefs shape team outcomes.'
A growing reliance on teams in changing and uncertain organizational environments creates a managerial imperative to understand the factors that enable team learning. Although much has been written about teams and about learning in organizations, our understanding of learning in teams remains limited. A review of the team effectiveness and organizational learning literatures reveals markedly different approaches and a lack of cross-fertilization between them. An emerging literature on group learning, with theoretical papers on groups as information-processing systems and a number of empirical studies examining information exchange in laboratory groups, has not investigated the learning processes of real work teams (cf. Argote, Gruenfeld, and Naquin, 1999). Although most studies of organizational learning have been field-based, empirical research on group learning has primarily taken place in the laboratory, and little research has been done to understand the factors that influence learning behavior in ongoing teams in real organizations.
Studies of work teams in a variety of organizational settings have shown that team effectiveness is enabled by structural features such as a well-designed team task, appropriate team composition, and a context that ensures the availability of information, resources, and rewards (Hackman, 1987). Many researchers have concluded that structure and design, including equipment, materials, physical environment, and pay systems, are the most important variables for improving work-team performance (Goodman, Devadas, and Hughson, 1988; Campion, Medsker, and Higgs, 1993; Cohen and Ledford, 1994) and have argued against focusing on interpersonal factors (e.g.,...