Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams

Administrative Science Quarterly, June, 1999 by Amy Edmonson

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., Goodman, Ravlin, and Schminke, 1987). According to this research, organization and team structures explain most of the variance in team effectiveness.

In contrast, organizational learning research has emphasized cognitive and interpersonal factors to explain effectiveness, showing, for example, that individuals' tacit beliefs about interpersonal interaction inhibit learning behavior and give rise to ineffectiveness in organizations (e.g., Argyris, 1993). This cognitive emphasis takes different forms. Organizational learning theorists have offered both descriptive theory explaining the failure of organizations to adapt rationally due to cognitive biases that favor existing routines over alternatives (e.g., Levitt and March, 1988) and prescriptive theory proposing interventions that alter individuals' "theories-in-use" to improve organization effectiveness (e.g., Argyris and Schon, 1978). The former theorists suggest that adaptive learning in social systems is fundamentally problematic and rare, and the latter, only slightly more sanguine, propose that expert intervention is necessary to bring it about (cf. Edmondson and Moingeon, 1998). This paper takes a different approach to understanding learning in organizations by examining to what extent and under what conditions learning occurs naturally in organizational work groups.

Much organizational learning research has relied on qualitative studies that provide rich detail about cognitive and interpersonal processes but do not allow explicit hypothesis testing (e.g., Senge, 1990; Argyris, 1993; Watkins and Marsick, 1993). Many team studies, in contrast, have used large samples and quantitative data but have not examined antecedents and consequences of learning behavior (e.g., Goodman, Devadas, and Hughson, 1988; Hackman, 1990; Cohen and Ledford, 1994). I propose that to understand learning behavior in teams, team structures and shared beliefs must be investigated jointly, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

This paper presents a model of team learning and tests it in a multimethod field study. 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. Organizational work teams are groups that exist within the context of a larger organization, have clearly defined membership, and share responsibility for a team product or service (Hackman, 1987; Alderfer, 1987). Their learning behavior consists of activities carried out by team members through which a team obtains and processes data that allow it to adapt and improve. Examples of learning behavior include seeking feedback, sharing information, asking for help, talking about errors, and experimenting. It is through these activities that teams can detect changes in the environment, learn about customers' requirements, improve members' collective understanding of a situation, or discover unexpected consequences of their previous actions.

These useful outcomes often go unrealized in organizations. Members of groups tend not to share the unique knowledge they hold, such that group discussions consist primarily of jointly held information (Stasser and Titus, 1987), posing a dilemma for learning in groups. More centrally, those in a position to initiate learning behavior may believe they are placing themselves at risk; for example, by admitting an error or asking for help, an individual may appear incompetent and thus suffer a blow to his or her image. In addition, such individuals may incur more tangible costs if their actions create unfavorable impressions on people who influence decisions about promotions, raises, or project assignments. Image costs have been explored in research on face saving, which has established that people value image and tacitly abide by social expectations to save their own and others' face (Goffman, 1955). Asking for help, admitting errors, and seeking feedback exemplify the kinds of behaviors that pose a threat to face (Brown, 1990), and thus people in organizations are often reluctant to disclose their errors (Michael, 1976) or are unwilling to ask for help (Lee, 1997), even when doing so would provide benefits for the team or organization. Similarly, research has shown that the sense of threat evoked in organizations by discussing problems limits individuals' willingness to engage in problem-solving activities (Dutton, 1993; MacDuffie, 1997). The phenomenon of threat rigidity has been explored at multiple levels of analysis, showing that threat has the effect of reducing cognitive and behavioral flexibility and responsiveness, despite the implicit need for these to address the source of threat (Staw, Sandelands, and Dutton, 1981). In sum, people tend to act in ways that inhibit learning when they face the potential for threat or embarrassment (Argyris, 1982).