The Contribution of Teams to Organizational Learning

Abstract

This chapter discusses how team learning, both within and across organizational teams, serves as a fundamental building block of organizational learning. Currently, the research on team learning falls into three general streams of work: learning curves in operational settings (outcome improvement), psychological experiments on team member coordination (task mastery), and field research on learning processes in teams (group process). The related literature in each stream is reviewed and an outline of how insights from these three streams form a foundation for a new research agenda aimed toward understanding the link between team learning and organizational learning is presented. It is suggested that considering learning across teams, such as through multiple team membership (MTM), by leveraging what is known about learning within teams can provide an important link between the team and organizational levels of learning. The practical implications of how the tension between productivity and learning shapes organizational learning strategies in modern, global companies are discussed.

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