Capacity, Collaboration, and Commonality: A Framework for Understanding Team Learning

This article develops a theory of learning in team contexts and tests the degree to which personal and situational variables impact knowledge creation within interactive task groups. Using the critical conditions of capacity, collaboration, and commonality as explanatory concepts, we examine the effects of cognitive ability, agreeableness, workload distribution, and structure on team learning. Results from 109 teams working on an interdependent command and control simulator suggest that teams learn the most when composed of people who are high in cognitive ability and learn the least when composed of people who are high in agreeableness. Teams with a distributed workload learned more than teams that overloaded individual members, and teams utilizing a paired structure learned more than teams structured either functionally or divisionally. The theoretical and practical implications of the aforementioned results are discussed, as well as possible limitations and directions for future research. Introduction and Background Although researchers have examined learning at a number of different levels within organizations, the processes underlying how organizations learn are still not fully understood. As a result, it has been suggested that future research needs to focus on the more micro underpinnings of organizational learning (Argote, 1993). Perhaps the best place to start is at the team level, since most of the learning within an organization takes place in groups or teams (Brown & Duguid, 1991). This shift from the individual to team learning is due to distinct changes in organizational structure over recent years. Employees are now designated tasks to complete as a team, often with a designated leader (e.g., Ilgen, 1994). Given these developments, it is critical to understand how teams learn. The purpose of this study is to develop a theory of learning in team contexts, and to examine the effects of personal and situational variables on knowledge creation within interactive task groups. Prior to introducing specific hypotheses, learning is defined at the team level. Then three conditions are introduced as essential precursors of team learning: capacity, collaboration, and commonality. After defining each condition, we discuss and then test the degree to which personal and situational antecedents relate to team learning using capacity, collaboration, and commonality as explanatory concepts. Team Learning: Definition and Conceptualization We adopt the perspective that learning reflects changes in both knowledge and behavior. This is illustrated well by Weiss (1990: 172), who proposes that “learning is a relatively permanent change in knowledge or skill produced by experience. ” Weiss originally intended his definition to be specific to the individual learner. However, when those individuals are placed in an interdependent team setting, learning can occur through the interaction of the team members. This social aspect of knowledge acquisition has recently received attention from scholars interested in socially shared cognition and information processing systems (e.g., Hinsz, Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997). Both streams of research view cognition as a combination of the social context and the interaction between the group members (Hollingshead, 1998). Within the group, cognition is shared through a system of encoding, storing, and retrieving information which has been termed transactive memory (e.g., Wegner, 1987, 1995). Transactive memory is derived from research on directory-sharing computer networks and consists of three key processes: (a) directory updating, where group members learn what other group members already know, (b) information allocation, where new information is passed along to the group member with the