Relationship between team learning and team effectiveness
ISSN: 1366-5626
Article publication date: 18 May 2021
Issue publication date: 28 July 2021
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to demonstrate that learning occurs as a collective process in addition to traditional individual learning and second, to identify its antecedents and consequences at the team level.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were gathered using questionnaires answered by 356 participants organized in 90 teams. Quantitative analytic strategies were applied to verify if individual answers of team members were similar enough to compound team scores and to measure the predictive power of the proposed model.
Findings
Results showed that team learning is a collective phenomenon: intra-team differences were small and differences between teams were significant. Additional results demonstrated that team learning is predicted by team potency (34%) and, at the group level, explains 5% of the team’s satisfaction.
Practical implications
The findings of the present research suggest that organizational managers can improve the results of teams by supporting the development of social processes such as potency and learning.
Originality/value
Learning in organizations has received close attention in recent years. However, publications are focusing mostly on the individual learning that occurs in teams and organizations. The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate what characterizes team learning as a collective process and which relations it maintains with other team processes.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research received partial financial support from the Post-Graduate Program in Social, Work and Organizational Psychology – PG-PSTO.
Citation
Puente-Palacios, K.E. and Barouh, R.T.d.J. (2021), "Relationship between team learning and team effectiveness", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 33 No. 7, pp. 534-546. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-11-2020-0180
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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