Psychological Safety & Learning Behavior In Work Team & Plaining The Failure of Organizations - Nursing Assignment Help

Assignment Task -                 
 

Commence

I thank Richard Hackman for their extensive advice and feedback on the design of this study and on several versions of this paper. Keith Murnighan, Rod Kramer, Mark  Cannon, and three anonymous reviewers provided feedback that greatly benefited the final version of the paper. I gratefully acknowledge the Division of Research at the Harvard Business School for provid ing financial support for this research.  

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 psy chological 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 create 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 pieces of the literature reveals markedly different approaches and a lack of cross-fertilization between them. The 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 Led ford, 1994) and have argued against.

Psychological Safety  

plaining 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 Schdn,  1 978). 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 natu rally in organizational work groups. 

 Much organizational learning research has relied on qualitative studies that provide rich detail about cognitive and inter-personal processes but do not allow explicit hypothesis test ing (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 cre ate unfavorable impressions on people who influence decisions about promotions, raises, or project assignments. I'm age 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'  351/ASQ, June 1999 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, Sand elands, 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). 

Hypothesis 2 (H2): Team psychological safety is positively associated with learning behavior in organizational work teams.  

Psychological safety does not play a direct role in the team's satisfying customers' needs, the core element of performance; rather, it facilitates the team's taking appropriate actions to accomplish its work. Thus, learning behavior should  mediate the effects of team psychological safety on performance outcomes:  

Hypothesis 3 (H3): Team learning behavior mediates between team psychological safety and team performance.  

Team Efficacy and Team Learning  

Building on earlier work on the role of self-efficacy in enhancing individual performance (Bandura, 1982), a body of research has established group efficacy as a group-level the 355/ASQ, June 1999 noumenon (e.g., Guzzo et al., 1993) and also reported a relationship between group efficacy and performance (Lindsley,  Brass, and Thomas, 1995; Gibson, 1996). This work has not specified mechanisms through which shared perceptions of efficacy lead to good performance, and one possibility is that efficacy fosters team members' confidence, which promotes learning behavior and helps accomplish desired team goals.

Hypothesis 4 (H4): Team efficacy is positively associated with team learning behavior.  

Team members deciding whether to reveal errors they have made are likely to be motivated to speak up if two conditions are satisfied: first, they believe they will not be rejected (team psychological safety) and, second, they believe that the team is capable of using this new information to generate useful results (team efficacy). Team psychological safety and team efficacy are thus complementary shared beliefs, one pertaining to interpersonal threat and the other characterizing the team's potential to perform. Team efficacy thus should supplement team psychological safety's positive effect on team learning:  Hypothesis 5 (H5): Team efficacy is positively associated with team learning behavior, controlling for the effects of team psychological safety. 

This Nursing Assignment has been solved by our Nursing Experts at My Uni Papers. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment Experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.