A GROUP-LEVEL LENS

THE VIEW THROUGH A DIFFERENT LENS: INVESTIGATING ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AT THE GROUP LEVEL OF ANALYSIS

Amy Edmondson1 Harvard Business School

ABSTRACT This paper investigates learning in work groups to address a gap in the literature. Existing theories of organizational learning have adopted either an organizational or individual level of analysis; neither approach predicts differences in learning behavior across work groups within the same organization. This paper reports on empirical research investigating organizational learning at the group level of analysis conducted in a company committed to becoming a learning organization. Exploratory analyses of qualitative data are used to examine how learning occurs in twelve groups engaged in four kinds of work. The findings provide insight into how work groups with psychological safety allow people to manage the risk inherent in learning in organizations.

Amy Edmondson, Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School, Morgan T87, Boston, MA 02163. Tel: 617.495.6732. Fax: 617.496.5265. E-mail: aedmondson@hbs.edu.

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1. INTRODUCTION To compete in uncertain and changing environments, organizations must frequently alter old routines and create new ways to meet evolving customer needs. Organizational learning is an encompassing rubric under which researchers have studied in remarkably varied ways this fundamental need to adapt and change (e.g. Argyris, 1982; Levitt & March, 1988; Hayes, Wheelwright & Clark, 1988; Senge, 1990; Schein, 1992; Pedler, Burgoyne & Boydell, 1990). An implicit assumption in many accounts of organization learning is that organizations are undifferentiated entities, such that within-organization variance is immaterial (e.g. Levitt & March, 1988). Even accounts that examine learning at the individual level of analysis tend to assume that all individuals in an organization face the same barriers to (or support for) learning (e.g. Argyris, 1993). Neither perspective predicts meaningful variation across entities within the same organization. This paper challenges these assumptions and investigates learning at the group level of analysis.

1.1 The Role of Work Groups in Organizational Learning The performance of an organization is affected by the performance of its work groups. A particularly creative new product development team, an effective senior management team, or a factory-based quality improvement team all might contribute positively to organizational performance. Therefore, to understand how organizations learn, this paper proposes that we need to understand how teams learn. In a new product development team, learning might mean identifying unarticulated customer needs, then designing and testing various solutions to meet those needs; in a senior management team, learning might involve diagnosing market shifts, challenging old assumptions and revising company strategy, and, in the manufacturing team, identifying and fixing causes of defects. Although different work groups in an organization may have little in common in terms of task or composition, they share the need to reflect on their own work and to coordinate with other groups for the organization to function effectively in a changing environment. Despite the face value of this proposition, the organizational learning literature has paid little attention to intra-organization activities at the group level of analysis. The research reported here adopts a group-level lens, and, in so doing, finds that learning varies considerably across work groups within the same organization. The terms work group and team are used interchangeably to refer to groups of individuals that exist within the context of a larger organization, have clearly defined membership and are responsible for a shared product or service (Hackman, 1987; Alderfer, 1987).

1.2 Team Learning Defined Learning has been defined as an iterative process of action and reflection (Schn, 1983; Kolb, 1984). Team learning is defined here similarly, as a process in which a team takes action, obtains and reflects upon feedback, and makes changes to adapt or improve. Just as individual practitioners across a fields as different as medicine and architecture learn by taking action, paying careful attention to feedback, modifying their actions and observing the effects of such changes (Schn, 1983), work groups likewise can take action, seek and reflect on feedback and make changes, followed by further feedback and reflection. Team learning as thus defined consists of behaviors such as feedback-seeking, help-seeking, experimenting and talking about errors; some of these "learning behaviors" are carried out by individuals on behalf of their team, some are carried out in conversation

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among members. Through learning behavior, teams can detect changes in the environment, identify customer requirements, improve members' shared understanding of a situation, or discover unexpected consequences of previous team actions. As these are useful outcomes for both teams and their organizations, it is important to identify conditions under which team learning occurs.

1.3 Overview of The Research This paper reports on a field study of learning behavior in teams in a company that had invested substantial management attention and financial and human resources in becoming a learning organization. The term learning organization has been used in the literature to convey a model of dynamic companies that are at once successful market competitors and vital communities of learners (Senge, 1990; Hayes, Wheelwright & Clark, 1988; Redding & Catanallo, 1994). At the time of this research, "Office Design Incorporated" (ODI) 2, a US manufacturer of office furniture with approximately fivethousand employees, was known as an innovative company, both for its award winning products and its progressive human resources policies. The company's promotional material described participative management and cooperation as sources of organization effectiveness; low turnover among its highly homogeneous employees and managers contributed further to a strong corporate culture and identity. Teams and teamwork were emphasized as early as 1979, as a way to encourage employee participation and empowerment. Finally, ODI was an active participant in a collaborative research center in the US in which 15 companies worked with university researchers to study and promote organizational learning in their organizations. Through this participation, ODI had engaged in a number of team training programs and other management learning activities, making it a good site in which to study team and organizational learning. The study reported here included teams engaged in management, new product development, internal staff services and manufacturing. The research design utilized qualitative methods to explore team learning behavior, followed by survey methods to obtain quantitative data for hypothesis testing. In this paper, analyses of qualitative data from twelve work teams are presented to explore group-level influences on learning behavior.

All company, team and individual names are pseudonyms.

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2. IMPLICATIONS OF LEVEL OF ANALYSIS IN ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING RESEARCH Existing organizational learning theories present implicit assumptions about the appropriate level of analysis. Theories with a sociological or economic perspective tend to focus on how organizations as entities learn (e.g. Huber, 1991; Levitt & March, 1988; Nelson & Winter, 1982), and theories based in a psychological perspective tend to focus on how individuals in organizational settings learn (e.g. Argyris, 1993; Daft & Weick, 1984; Pedler, Burgoyne & Boydell, 1990). Both types of theories take unit of analysis for granted, providing no explanation for the choice. (See Edmondson and Moingeon, 1996, for a more thorough review.) Exemplars in each category drawing from theory of the firm (James March and colleagues) and theory of action (Chris Argyris and colleagues) are discussed below to illustrate the difference in approach to studying organizational learning and to set the stage for a third approach, focused on learning in work groups.

2.1 Organizational-level Analysis In their influential article, Levitt and March (1988) distinguish theories of organizational learning from theories of rational choice, resource dependency, and population ecology. Drawing from behavioral theories of the firm, they focus on how routines influence the behavior of organizations. Rather than treating learning as a way to combat inertia in organizations, these authors view organizational learning as an alternative mechanism to explain how organizations evolve over time. Processes such as imitation and trial-and-error experimentation are proposed to explain the behavior of organizations. In contrast to other, more normative, approaches, learning is seen as a faulty mechanism. Because behavior in organizations is routine driven (Cyert & March, 1963; Nelson & Winter, 1982), the lessons of the past embodied in current routines dominate organizational life. Organizational routines are thus over-learned, because "action stems from a logic of appropriateness or legitimacy, more than from a logic of consequentiality or intention" (Levitt & March, 1988: 320). Learning is a kind of accumulation of past inferences. Levitt and March embrace the organization as their primary unit of analysis, and focus on the ecological nature of how organizations select and encode routines. They observe that organizations as entities stop actively seeking alternatives once they have accumulated experience in known routines; this creates barriers to adaptation at the organizational level, such as "competency traps" (preferring current practices to potential alternatives, leading to the continuity of inferior work processes) and "superstitious learning" (erroneously viewing desired outcomes as caused by well-reasoned organizational decisions). Because of these organizational barriers, only exceptionally inappropriate routines are likely to lead to a perceived need for change (Levitt & March, 1988). Individual actors are absent in this theory. Although properties of human cognition such as bounded rationality (March & Simon, 1959) contribute to the patterns described, the behavior of individuals is not seen as critical to understanding organizational learning.

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2.2 Individual-level Analysis In contrast to the focus on organization-level phenomena imbedded in the theory of the firm, Argyris (1982; 1993) focuses on micro-level details of interpersonal interaction. Theory of action (Argyris & Schn, 1974) the product of this focus maintains that individual actors engaged in conversations with the potential for embarrasment or threat fail to communicate relevant information clearly and thus fail to learn from each other. In these conversations, individuals' implicit theories of interpersonal effectiveness ("the Model 1 theory-in-use") lead them to behave in ways that ironically produce the opposite of what they hope to produce (Argyris & Schn, 1978). Analogous to the competency trap, Model 1 constitutes an impediment to learning at the micro-level of individuals' causal reasoning processes. The core insight of this work is that, for individuals working in organizations, the goals of self-protection and learning are at odds. In the process of protecting themselves, individuals are unable to engage in the kind of open, inquiry-driven discussion that would be required for true learning to occur. To overcome this barrier, Argyris and his colleagues teach a new theory-in-use ("Model 2") which lacks the counter-productive features of Model 1 and enables learning by allowing people to discuss threatening issues directly (e.g. Argyris, Putnam & Smith, 1990). It takes extraordinary effort and skill, however, to use Model 2 in threatening interpersonal contexts. Just as Levitt and March ignore the individual, Argyris can be seen as over-emphasizing the individual. His lens is so precisely tuned to individuals' micro-level reasoning, that it cannot encompass proximal contextual factors that may give rise to meaningful variance in the anti-learning patterns he has identified.

2.3 The Group Level of Analysis: Observing the Effects of Interpersonal Context on Learning in Organizations Neither of the above theories predict variance across work groups in the same organizational context. The former describes organizations as if they were uniform undifferentiated entities; the latter tends to assume all organizational actors are up against the same cognitive and interpersonal barriers to learning. Thus, neither organizational nor individual levels of analysis pay attention to ways the face-to-face interpersonal context can vary, and how this may affect learning. For both empirical and theoretical reasons, a third approach is warranted. First, most work in organizations takes place in a face-to-face context; people have discussions about what should be done, plans are developed, decisions are made, and ideas and materials are exchanged all between people interacting face-toface. Second, other theory and research describes differences in performance across groups within organizations (e.g. Cohen & Ledford, 1994; Hackman, 1990), suggesting the likelihood of differences in learning behavior. Turning a research lens toward the face-to-face arena of the work group serves to highlight the interpersonal risk inherent in learning behavior. Learning involves confronting a gap between what one knows or is able to do and what one wants to know or be able to do; this itself introduces a source of psychological threat. More specifically, to learn through experience in an organizational context, one must take actions for which outcomes are uncertain and, in the process, risk appearing incompetent or ignorant. In the same way, in attempting to learn by asking for feedback, an individual risks hearing criticism. Similarly, by admitting a mistake to help others learn vicariously what not to do, a person speaking up risks harming his or her own reputation. Understandably, therefore, people in

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organizations are reluctant to disclose their mistakes (Michael, 1976; Leape, 1994; Edmondson, 1996), and organizations have difficulty learning from them. The risks of learning are non-existent or not salient when one is alone or among strangers whose impressions do not matter; however, in organizations where neither of these features exist, learning behavior poses definite interpersonal risk. Understanding how people manage the inherent risk of learning in the presence of other people beyond the uniform use of a risk-avoiding tacit theory (Argyris, 1993) is a critical issue for organizational learning research. The culture of an organization is likely to influence the interpersonal context faced by all employees (Schein, 1990; 1993), but grouplevel factors also may influence interpersonal context. Argyris and Schn showed that threatening issues impede learning, but did not address the possibility that groups might have varying interpersonal contexts, effectively altering the perceived risk of the same issue or behavior. To summarize this argument, three research propositions can be articulated: (1) Learning behavior varies across work groups within the same organization, (2) Work groups have different interpersonal contexts, such that perceptions of the risk of a given behavior are likely to vary across groups, and (3) Learning behavior will be more extensive in groups in which perceived interpersonal risk is low.

4. METHODS To investigate whether the group level of analysis offers new insights for organizational learning research, I sought teams in an organization that had been working to promote learning. The existence of an organization-wide effort served to bias the site in favor of finding learning behavior and also in favor of finding greater consistency across work groups, as the initiative presumably exerted a similar influence throughout the organization. ODI met this criterion, and allowed me to study a variety of work groups, or "teams" as they were called, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. These teams carried out four kinds of work: management (planning and overseeing such activities as the transportation of products to retailers and end-users), internal services (providing services to others in the company such as computer support or accounting), new product development (designing and developing new products) and manufacturing (handson production). I interviewed and observed twelve teams three in each of the four kinds of work activities and collected survey data from 51 teams.

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4.1 Procedure In the first phase of the research, I studied a senior management team, consisting of the CEO and seven other senior executives, working to develop a new strategy for ODI. The learning of this team was particularly important for the company, which had experienced a recent, unprecedented decline in market share, such that revising the company strategy was considered crucial. Given both the importance of their task and the opportunity for extensive observation these meetings afforded, I invested a disproportional amount of time studying this team compared to the other eleven teams. A benefit of having such extensive data showing how team members interact with each other was that it allowed ample opportunity for the team to demonstrate learning behavior and to accomplish their task. Over a six-month period, I observed and tape-recorded five full-day meetings and conducted individual interviews with six of the eight members of the team. In the next phase of the research, I studied eleven other teams over a five-month period, exploring how other ODI teams differed from the strategy team in both interpersonal context and learning behavior. In this phase, I conducted 30 interviews with members and observers of all teams and observed team meetings of eight teams, each of which lasted one to three hours. To avoid leading questions which might force informants to comment on interpersonal context or learning behavior, I asked team members to describe features of their team such as the goal, the nature of the work they do, how the team organized its work and what challenges it faced. These general questions allowed me to listen for examples of learning behavior. Observing team meetings, I noted examples of learning behavior-such as asking for feedback, asking for help, discussing errors, and proposing or describing instances of seeking help or information from outside the team. I taped all meetings of the strategy team and all individual interviews, except those in the factory where noise levels made it difficult to do so. For all other team meetings I relied on note taking to record data. I subsequently administered a survey to members of 53 teams at ODI, measuring team characteristics, including learning behavior.3 At the same time, for each team, two or three non-members were identified as recipients of the team's work and given a short survey developed to assess team learning behavior and performance.4 Findings from these data are reported in Edmondson (1999). In this study, for the nine teams for which both kinds of data are available,5 survey measures were used to validate qualitative assessments of interpersonal context and learning behavior.

4.2 Analytic Strategy I reviewed tapes and notes to identify data suggestive of learning behavior and pertinent to interpersonal context, and to assess whether these constructs varied across the twelve teams. For each team, I listed all quotes that suggested the presence or absence of interpersonal risk or learning behavior. These categorized data served two purposes; first, they illustrated the kinds of learning behavior that were observable and, second, they highlight variance across teams. Comparing accumulated notes for each team allowed categorization of teams as high or low learning. For each team I then constructed a table

427 of the 496 team members from 51 teams completed the surveys, an 86% response rate; of these 51 teams, 90% of members responded. 4 135 of the 150 observers surveyed returned the survey, a 91% response rate. 5 Nine of the twelve teams studied extensively were included in the survey sample, as one of the teams no longer existed by the time of the survey and two declined to participate.

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that juxtaposed data illustrating interpersonal context and learning behavior.6 Finally, I constructed a table comparing illustrative data from all twelve teams; this table is discussed and shown in the next section.

5. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Exploratory analyses of interview and observational data reveal some of the ways organizational learning is manifested at the group level. Analysis of the strategy team is presented first. Next, I examine two other teams to show a similar pattern in new product development and manufacturing. I then turn to three high learning teams to show a contrast.

5.1 The Strategy Team Extensive observation of the strategy team revealed some of the ways a team can fail to engage in learning behavior, while facing a task that clearly called for it. Qualitative data from the half-year series of meetings showed a team interacting cautiously and making little progress in its task. Instead of systematic review of customer data or vigorous debate of alternatives, the team used much of its time to engage in a kind of ongoing philosophical discussion, stretching out over the six months. Transcript data reveal numerous examples of curiously indirect language and little evidence of question-asking or probing. The most important data, from one perspective, are those missing in hundreds of pages of transcripts evidence of specific decisions or progress made toward a new strategy. Certain features of the conversation can be highlighted to illustrate the lack of learning behavior. First, the dialogue was often characterized by abstract propositions being put forward but not questioned, made more specific, or explored for action implications. Second, the conversation was sprinkled with unusual metaphors, in place of tangible detail or market data. Third, as time went on, participants did not take action to remedy the team's lack of progress. Members of the team were not unaware of this weakness, as one commented in the fourth meeting (referring not to the team but to ODI as an organization), We do, around here, have a tendency to not take the time to put it together, to bring it to a conclusion. Everybody can leave with their snippets being heard, but we didn't arrive at some consensus, so we can understand what happened and then we go away. And then I'm still throwing my snippet out at the next meeting.

These tables are shown in Edmondson's 1996 unpublished PhD dissertation, "Group and organizational influences on team learning," Harvard University, Organizational Behavior program.

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Despite such self-criticism, no actions were taken or proposals made to change it data that would have provided evidence of learning behavior. Considerable effort was spent time discussing the company in abstract ways, without anyone questioning this use of time. To illustrate this pattern, in the second meeting, a longtime senior executive George, commented on the company's inability to innovate: We deify people, sequentially, certain designers, or certain innovators... It takes almost a philosophical bent, because of some behavioral issues in the way we collectively behave. The thing that strikes me lately...is the company's almost absolute inability to gracefully try an new idea. The claim that the company is unable to try a new idea is abstract and cannot confirmed or disconfirmed without asking for more detail or for examples. No one stopped to inquire into this evaluation, however, and George continued, It's part of the search for the truth, to contemplate the initiative, to build an almost irreconcilable impasse between kicking that initiative off and tending to today's business. It [a new initiative] becomes so large that it becomes a conundrum. There's nothing graceful about it. There's nothing easy about it. And we're culturally unable to take an experimental, short-term experimentation approach to the market. Another team member, Greg, built on this line of thinking, remaining equally abstract, We magnify the risk of [an innovation] to a point where we're at truly an impasse. We can't fund it. We can't begin it, because we're afraid of losing. At this point, Bob jumped in, apparently disagreeing, but so indirectly that the disagreement is disguised, We're big on innovation, but we're terrible on evaluation, which is when you say, 'okay, move ahead.' Or, 'this one doesn't go.' Presently, he elaborated, We don't get to that. What we do is, we make definitive issues about what we believe in, but now if you're going to ask me to rank investment priorities, two things have to happen. One is identify what those investment priorities are, and what the real opportunity is, and then you own it. And then I can say okay. Jill disagreed with this negative assessment, We're very early at it, and we're neophytes at it, but the business development team is attempting to play that role... Thus, although team members appeared to disagree with each other at times, they rarely expressed it directly thereby avoiding confrontation. Another intriguing feature of the conversation was the frequent use of metaphor. To illustrate, Greg commented, "It's part of our search for the truth... we think we'll discover

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somehow that there's a kernel in here that will create a whole cornfield" In the third meeting, George reflected, Listening to Bob talk about the ship, I'd like to explore the difference between the metaphor of the ship and how the rudder gets turned and when, in contrast to a flotilla, where there's lots of little rudders and we're trying to orchestrate the flotilla. I think this contrast is important. At one level, we talk about this ship and all the complexities of trying to determine not only its direction, but how to operationalize the ship in total to get to a certain place, versus allowing a certain degree of freedom that the flotilla analogy evokes. I think that's another part of this... The CEO then interrupts, There's a question of doing what you want to do and doing it how you want to do it. But you can't have people just going off and doing what they want to do. You know, some of them may be playing baseball all day long. But, we have to have some alignment with the corporate directives. In evoking the ship versus flotilla metaphor, George appeared to be arguing against a single agreed-upon new direction for the company, advocating instead a general direction that leaves individuals (or business units it is unclear) flexible to make their own decisions. Metaphors convey implicit promises. Kernels give rise to corn fields; ships can be redirected by turning rudders; flotillas are more flexible but just as seaworthy. Each metaphor is a complete story that cannot be refuted. The CEO's comment shows that he believed George was advocating an absurd degree of freedom, in which individual employees are free to do whatever they want with their time. Yet, this degree of specificity was never reached. Employed as substitutes for specific data or proposals, these metaphors served to keep the team safely distanced from making difficult choices. The data overall showed little evidence of learning behavior. I never observed the team stopping to evaluate their process. The use of abstract descriptions and metaphors avoided the interpersonal risk of making concrete recommendations that might be wrong and also avoided the risk of direct disagreement. By the end of six months, little progress had been made. Given the importance of the task and the seniority and experience of the team members, this lack of learning can seem puzzling. However, interviews with members of the team shed some light into their cautiousness. Interviewed individually, the members of the team members reveal a fear of speaking up and making mistakes in the group. In somewhat dramatic terms they describe the management "purges" that mar ODI's history, including the firing of the previous CEO and his strong allies. Several of the executives describe their concern that the company's espoused values of participative management and learning are in conflict with an unambiguously hierarchical management structure, leading to what one executive called "management gridlock." Management gridlock, he explained, is produced when "everyone feels a need to participate" by adding their views, but fear and deference to hierarchy fosters abstract, indirect language. None of this was discussed in the group as a whole, despite all members understanding it. These descriptions conveyed a shared belief that there is no safety net in this team as in, if you screw up, you get purged making the lack of learning behavior understandable. Was the entire organization equally unsafe and risk averse? To answer this, I turn to data from other teams. The next section examines two teams in which there was little

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evidence of learning behavior, to show how teams engaged in different work activities also can be fraught with interpersonal risk.

5.2 Teams that Don't Learn In one of the three new product development teams studied, members refrained from openly discussing their views in team meetings, later confiding to me their concern about the process. The Radar team was formed to design a new product to augment an existing product line. The team consisted of individual contributors from design, engineering, marketing, finance and manufacturing, who have demonstrated the ability to behave in more learning oriented ways as members of other new product development teams (as will be seen below). Analysis of a half-day meeting and interviews with members of the team suggested that Radar was not actively learning. Although they sought customer input, they remained strangely distant from customers, and learned less than they should have from the data and experience available. Despite obtaining customer input, the team's ultimate solution did not reflect customer needs. As one member reported, We tried to solve a problem to create a design but we [later] discovered that customers were not interested. They were not willing to pay more for it. [The product we developed] solved our problem, not theirs. Privately, each team members explained that, although Radar changed directions during the project, it did not do so quickly enough. In one member's words, "we did make changes but too slowly." Independently, a senior manager in research and development reflected on Radar's performance in a similar way, "they were too methodical, too detailed in their wandering... they did not do enough checking with customers until too far along.... they did learn, but not fast enough." Radar's leader (Jon) describes these as "blind alleys" and explained, We would go down a path a while, develop details, then abandon it. Each path we went down too far represented time wasted... We had a pre-conceived notion of what was important which prevented us from seeing it...

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An engineer on the team explained this journey similarly; "we found ourselves going around in circles a lot. Sometimes this took a lot of time." Some of this delay may be due to Radar's use of a vendor to obtain customer feedback; admitted a team member, "we talked to a variety of customers by phone. Actually, we hired a company to do it but then we did it ourselves the second time." While this was occurring, Radar remained internally focused for long stretches of time before reaching out to report to relevant others at ODI. Team members confided that they "stayed away" from senior management, waiting until they had more answers to communicate. Unlike the strategy team, Radar was willing to disagree; however, Jon sometimes acted in ways that shut down, or rendered impotent, the disagreement, by insisting that his view prevail. Observing a team meeting, I noted that he fought against others' input into decisions; for example, in a discussion of financial projections to be submitted to management, he advocated "leaving freight [costs] out... to make the numbers look better," to which the finance representative (Bud) responded, "I'd rather have real life." Jon fought back, "I'd rather have a footnote [citing freight costs]." At this point, other chimed in to support Bud's position, but Jon continued to advocate his view, saying, "we didn't do it [include freight] before; I don't want it to look inconsistent." Jon appeared annoyed and did not yield to the group, which, over time, might contribute to a reluctance to speak up. To further understand why the team was not able to make important changes sooner, we can look to data obtained in individual interviews, which provide some insight into members' own causal theories. First, the marketing representative on the team attributed political motives to other team members, We struggled through the problem statement, because it [the project] was clearly for ODI's internal needs, not for the customers... We had a lot of nay sayers, who just wanted to do it [work on the assignment from management], rather than develop a problem statement. They were worried about getting their hands slapped by management. The belief that others are unwilling to do a thorough analysis because they want to please senior management is difficult to raise without appearing to accuse others of improper motives. Other members told me there was a lack of trust in the team; for example, the Radar engineer described his contrasting experience as a member of a different team, "Maverick has a lot of trust in the expertise of the others [unlike this one]." It is unclear whether this refers to trust in each others' intentions or competence; however either might lead team members to fail to speak up in productive ways. Similarly, another member commented that the team leader, Jon, "didn't want to hear it," referring to why it was difficult to raise different views. Although Jon was technically a peer of other team members, as the nominal leader of the group, he felt responsible for meeting senior management's goals and may have failed to use this concern in a productive way. In Argyris's terms, topics such as political motives and lack of trust are "undiscussable." It is not clear how this lack of trust originates; Jon's actions appear to contribute to it actions which are no doubt motivated by wanting to perform well in his assignment. Nonetheless, it is easy to see how this interpersonal context, once taken hold, can contribute to perpetuating risk-averse, non-learning behavior in the team. In the very different environment of the factory, a production team in the storage systems plant also lacked evidence of learning. Unlike their counterparts in a self-managed

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team making the same product in the second shift, people on this team (the day shift), "sit and wait if a problem comes up," according to an internal consultant, Mark, who coached manufacturing teams throughout several plants. He continued, "If there is a technical problem, they don't ask the engineers. They don't want to look like brown-nosers..." Later he provided a specific instance, "They were having problems with the glue but they didn't get help, they just sit and don't work then they get to do overtime on Saturday." The team's work remained divided according to specialized sub-tasks a situation that members actively resisted changing, leaving cross-training at a minimum. There was evidence that team members were put down for working hard on this team. As Mark explained, "Sally and Sue both had been getting a hard time on the first shift for outperforming." Both women left the team and moved to the second shift where they were able to be themselves and contribute to an improvement process in a new team. Mark believed that members of the storage team have "bad attitudes" that cannot be changed other than by replacement with new members. These scanty data suggest an interpersonal context in which there is pressure to conform and it is risky to speak up. In the next section, teams that present a contrast to this are examined.

4.3 Teams that Learn The three new product development teams I studied started with the same kind of task; the way the teams worked, however, was markedly different. Unlike Radar, both Maverick and Beanstalk appeared to engage in frequent learning behavior. An external consultant/designer, Jack, who works with both Beanstalk and Radar teams described one difference between the teams; "[for Beanstalk] I pick up the phone and call anyone...but for Radar I have to go through Jon." In Beanstalk, any of the members speaks for the team; in Radar, the leader prefers to maintain control over the process. In contrast to Radar, Beanstalk had an open, energetic exchange of ideas and arguments. Describing his experience on Beanstalk, Bud observed that, unlike other teams he'd been on, there were no "Monday morning quarterbacks" which he explained meant that people speak openly in the team meetings about their concerns and disagreements whereas in other teams they wait until the meeting is over and speak privately "in the hall" about their frustrations. He continued, "they bring [conflict] up directly; they don't let it fester... there's healthy conflict; they're always challenging each other's notions." As Jack explained, "these people like to challenge and communicate. Denise and Martha are great at challenging things. The product will be more successful because of it." The Beanstalk team also actively sought input and feedback from outside the team, from senior management and from other departments such as marketing. For example, Jane, the team marketing representative, explained, I spend one day a week in [other site] where other marketing people are... to keep them informed... Denise keeps us connected to the advanced applications area, and they work with customers to find new ways to use our products... Margo goes to the engineering and manufacturing people to make sure they're up to date.... and [she] has to sit in on the operations team. Another member explained that the team leader, "Martha is...very good at making sure others in the company know and getting their input, asking if they agree... she asks for input frequently..." Martha concurs, "as we promote Beanstalk internally, I've learned to ask

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questions in advance, to see where people are. Then I try to incorporate that [knowledge] into my delivery..." Within the team context, the team engaged in learning behavior such as making changes and experimentation. As Martha described it, There is a lot of testing of new ways to do stuff. We're doing design and engineering at the same time. It's wild. It's incredibly complex. We need to constantly be creative about the mechanisms." And, later in the interview she elaborated, There have been a lot of iterations. It's like reducing a sauce by half. It's a more flavorful sauce, a more complex group of ingredients, but the end result is simpler. We made it easier to use, more multifunctional by continually challenging ourselves to find what is essential. Interpersonal trust and mutual respect appeared to go hand in hand in Beanstalk. For example, one member offered, "the team member has to be willing to state what they believe and be willing to let go of it... Some people [in other teams], if they don't get their way, they stay silent. This group gets over it." These statements capture goodwill and respect for other team members as well as an implicit expectation that they will act in ways that support the teams goals. As Margo, the manufacturing representative, reported, "there's much greater openness on this team it's intangible... we have a personal interest in each other. We're comfortable outside the realm of work, we've shared personal information..." She continued, offering a theory of teamwork, "if you don't know anything about people, you don't know how to react to them... our efforts to get to know each other led to our mutual respect... At the core, these are outstanding human beings they're not out to corrupt my success." Even a partial outsider, the design consultant Jack, observed, "Each person is important; everyone is respected." It is easy to see how the inherent risk of learning is mitigated in this kind of interpersonal context. In the above descriptions, team members exuded confidence in their ability to count on each other. There is no need to hold back before offering a new idea, asking a question, or discussing a problem waiting to see how others might react. Margo called it intangible; as an outsider, I found it to be tangible. There was a kind of coherent interpersonal context that I suspected could override risk-averse features of the business or organization contexts. As the new product development task itself lends itself to learning behavior, we turn to a team in the factory to explore learning in a very different setting. The technical support team (Tech) maintains, occasionally modifies, and provides technical assistance for equipment used in making both standard mass-produced products and one-of-a-kind custom orders. Ken, the team leader, responded enthusiastically to the invitation to participate in a research study. In the team's daily 7:00 AM meeting, I observed a number of examples of learning behavior and heard members' unsolicited descriptions of others. To begin with, almost immediately after I joined the group, Ken asked me publicly, "are you here to help us be better?" An eagerness to improve characterized much of the team's conversation; there were references in the half-hour meeting to trying something new, making changes in the process or equipment, trying a new stain, talking to internal customers, and bringing in another person from elsewhere in the plant to work with the team.

A GROUP-LEVEL LENS 15

The meeting began with quick updates. Each person's report was task-focused, describing problems or solutions that had arisen within the past day or two. Although the conversation was energetic and friendly, it was notably lacking in extraneous chat (until the end of the meeting at which point the group spent a few minutes casually talking). During the brief reports others listened carefully without interrupting the speaker, waiting to ask or answer questions when he or she paused. For example, after Angela described "printer problems with those labels" and asked "who can we ask for help?" Rob responded, "how about asking the vendors who make the labels? They probably know how to fix it," and Ken offered to make the call. Later, Rob described test results of a new paint production process; "I tested the high gloss, and everything came out good but not on the hot water test. I won't pass it on that. But I called Jim, and he's going to come help." He reported on his use of new, trial equipment for conducting these tests, "I used the color-analyzer [paused] I know it's not the right word," and then looked to Ken for help; Ken responded supportively, "photospectrometer." Rob continued, "it's worth the twelve-thousand dollars because we will save twenty-five thousand." Ken agreed with Rob's assessment, and promised to follow through on acquiring the machine. There was much evidence of helpseeking and help-giving in the team meeting, including Larry, a new member, asking, "Can you set up a separate pump for one color? I am thinking about the problems we're now having keeping consistency in [a certain] color." In response, Rob suggested a way for him to proceed. Tech was proactive in maintaining external relationships. For example, on their own initiative they spread members' shifts around the clock, so that someone is always available. One member thus worked from 1 or 3 AM to 9 or 11 AM each day making himself available to the two night shifts, while still being able to meet and work in the early morning with rest of his team. Team members appeared to actively seek and provide help to their internal "customers". In a team meeting, one member reported, "I worked with Custom Choices; it's all set. I'll go over today and help them do inventory, show them how to use our process... I also talked to third shift Ron and Margaret they're having trouble with 843 and 944 [two stains]; they said they're not dark enough." In response, another member suggested that Ron and Margaret might be themselves creating the problem, "I think they're wiping it too much, playing with it too much" after which she volunteered to "go work with them." After the meeting, several members sat for a few minutes talking with me. One volunteered a description of the group that clearly demonstrated a lack of perceived interpersonal risk as did her willingness to offer it to me publicly "We all click together. We don't wear a mask. We know each other outside of work, so we don't have to have a 'workface'." Another team member brought up a specific kind of interpersonal risk, explaining, "it's the worst feeling when you need help but you're afraid to ask for it... this team isn't like that it's easy to ask." These descriptions present an interpersonal context in which members have a psychological safety net. The risk of admitting an error or asking a question becomes minute with this safety net in place.

5.3 The Relationship between Interpersonal Context and Learning Behavior It was not difficult in this study to obtain data pertinent to interpersonal context. In fact, for every team studied, at least one informant brought up the absence or presence of trust. Many volunteered the importance of trust for a team to work. These references included trust in other team members' competence and in their intentions. Illustrating the former, Bud said about Maverick "I trust the people here that they're making the right

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decisions, for the function and for ODI. And they feel the same way about me." And, Margo's notion of team members "not out to corrupt my success" exemplifies trust in intentions. Altogether, informants in this study provided rich descriptions of the interpersonal context in which they worked (e.g., "we don't have to have a workface," or "people are put down for being different"). From such data, we can infer tacit beliefs about whether or not it is safe to take interpersonal risks. That is, if one makes a mistake, or asks for help, will it lead to penalty or rejection? A coherent feature of a team's interpersonal context thus emerges from these data, in which interpersonal trust and respect contribute to a shared, tacit understanding of the level of interpersonal risk one faces at work. This feature can be referred to as psychological safety; when present, it serves as a safety net that allows people to take actions that would otherwise be too risky in an organizational setting. Having a psychological safety net means that one will not actually be harmed by the inevitable stumbles and falls that happen in the process of stretching, experimenting, and learning. The data suggest that these perceptions are very tangible and important, yet, at the same time, utterly taken for granted (as simply the way things are) by team members. In these data, this feature clearly lived at the group level of analysis. In each team, members revealed similar perceptions of the interpersonal context they faced, and yet teams varied dramatically from one to another. These teams suggest that the presence of psychological safety in a team can enable people to engage in learning behavior that would otherwise seem foolhardy. Contemplating life in the low learning teams, one can empathize with members' reluctance to jump in eagerly to share mistakes, seek feedback and ask questions. Given how they understand their world, the tacit calculus involved in taking such risks does not lend itself to learning behavior. In contrast, in the high learning teams, there is a good-natured sense of humour about mistakes and imperfection, as integral to learning and progress. The meaning of the same action is different, depending on the level of psychological safety. Three other teams were classified as low learning from qualitative data, a senior management team overseeing facilities and internal services team responsible for publications and computer support, and the three remaining teams were high learners a management team responsible for transportation of ODI products and services, a new product development team, Maverick, and a production team called Stain. Table 1 presents illustrative quotes for all twelve teams studied, and highlights the correspondence between psychological safety and learning behavior across teams. The tight coupling between the two variables suggests not only that psychological safety makes learning easier, but further that both variables might reinforce each other. For example, as people like Tech's Rob take risks such as asking Ken for help, and find that these risks yield positive results, psychological safety is likely to strengthen. If not disconfirmed by experience, a belief that the team is safe for risk may become even more robust over time. Finally, the variance across teams highlighted in Table 1 also suggest that a strong organizational culture as was characteristic of ODI does not exert the only, or even the primary, influence on learning behavior. This study did not address causes of psychological safety. Members of Tech offered one explanation; "we know each other outside of work; so we don't have to have a workface'." In their view, knowing the situations individuals face in their lives helped to put behavior in context, leading to more understanding, less chance of attributing negative intentions to their actions, and thus greater psychological safety. This suggests a strategy for building psychological safety in a team, which goes beyond the domain of this study. Others either directly, or inadvertently pointed to the influence of team leaders. Although

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there is some evidence of team leaders having particularly strong influences on psychological safety in these data, more research is required to investigate this and other potential influences.

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Table 1: Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Groups Engaged in Four Organizational Activities
Work Group Activity Psychological Safety1 (with Illustrative Data) Learning Behavior2 (with Illustrative Data)

Strategy

Management

Low*

Interviewed individually, executives recall "purges" firings caused by previous senior managers' errors and "management gridlock" meetings that go nowhere because of a fear of speaking openly. Member reports, "We wait to hear what [team leader/senior manager] thinks before talking."

Low*

"People sent proposals and never heard back. They called it the 'black hole' nothing ever came out."

Facilities

Management

Low*

Low*

Member interviewed says, "the team gets stuck... the dynamics are that the conversation gets shut down." In meeting, manager says "I know that I don't have all the answers... Is there anything you can add?" followed by input from multiple people... "[we went down] blind alleys... We had a preconceived notion of what was important that prevented us from seeing it... this took a lot of time."

Transportation

Management

High

Senior manager/team leader explains that she "wants to earn their respect and get them to open up."

High

Radar

New product development

Low*

"He [team leader] doesn't want to hear it... " "They're worried about getting their hands slapped."

Low*

Maverick

New product development

High

Engineer working on both Maverick and Radar: "this team has a lot of trust in the expertise of the others, unlike Radar." Finance person: "I trust the people here that they're making the right decision, for the function and for ODI. And they feel the same way about me." "At the core, these are outstanding human beings they're not out to corrupt my success."

High

"We learned [how to learn from customers]; don't over-present what you're thinking in advance...they won't disagree -- so you end up not learning from them...have a non-team member present, to help them respond openly... We learned to listen to what they're saying." "There is a lot of testing of new ways to do stuff. We're doing design and engineering at the same time. It's wild; it's incredibly complex... there have been a lot of iterations." "I don't get honest feedback... people just don't hear me." "People are leaving but none of the problems get addressed." [One member] "complains to others" not on the team ("to vent"), but is "not able to confront other team members openly." "We experimented with different meeting lengths, from a whole day to an hour, and ended up with half-day meetings as the best length" "If there's a technical problem, they don't ask the engineers for help." "They were having problems with the glue, but they didn't get help; they just sit and don't work, then they get to do overtime on Saturday." "...if we have a quality issue we're not sure about something we've just done we'll bring others in without telling them what the issue is to ask them if they see a problem..." After filling out the team survey but before getting feedback, member asks me right away: "Were we okay as a team?" Leader asks, "Are you here to help us be better?"

Beanstalk

New product development

High

High

Dealer publications

Internal services

Low

"People are put down for being different ..."

Low

Computer support

Internal services

Low

"[one person] monitors the others, judging their behavior... but she can t confront them... she questions their competence..." "We all respect each other, which is critical for being open."

Low

Computer integration

Internal services

High

High

Storage

Manufacturing

Low

"Sally and Sue both were getting a hard time [in this group] for outperforming [being too productive]"

Low

Stain

Manufacturing

High

Interviewee contrasts current work group with earlier version, in which people were "blaming each other..."

High

Tech

Manufacturing

High

"We don't wear a mask." "We don't have to have a 'workface'."

High

Overall rating derived from researcher's assessment of qualitative data from individual interviews (excerpted illustrative data shown) and confirmed by survey measures of construct (above or below sample median of 4.7 on a 7-point Likert scale). 2 Overall rating derived from researcher's assessment of qualitative data from interviews and observation of meetings (excerpted illustrative data shown) and confirmed by survey measures of construct (above or below sample median of 5.3 on a 7-point Likert scale). *No survey data available for these teams.

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6. CONCLUSION This paper showed how the interpersonal risks inherent in learning in organizational settings can be mitigated by psychological safety in face-to-face work teams. Actions that would be considered too risky in one team are readily taken in another team. The data suggest that the construct of team psychological safety a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking is helpful for understanding learning behavior in organizations. As organizational learning research has tended to assume either an organization or individual level of analysis, group-level factors have not been studied. The aspiration of this paper is thus to suggest that work groups provide an important area of inquiry for understanding learning in organizations. The organization discussed in this paper provides a vivid example of how a company working to become a learning organization faced obstacles and supports that lived at the group level. The findings from using a group level lens suggest new explanations of how organizations can learn or fail to learn, that add to previous explanations at the organization-level, such as superstitious learning and the inertia of routines, and to explanations at the individual level, such as how individual s theories-in-use prevent learning. Thus both organizational and individual level perspectives are useful, but this study suggests that they are incomplete.

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