1. A model to study the influence of team psychological
safety and team learning on team knowledge creation
Peter Cauwelier, Vincient Ribiere, PhD and Alex Bennet, PhD
February 7th 2014

2. Knowledge is the critical asset giving organizations sustainable competitive
advantage (Chen, D. H. C., & Dahlman, C. J., 2005), and teams are key units
contributing to an organization’s performance (Edmondson, A. C. 2012).
Learning leads to knowledge creation (Senge, P. 1994, Bennet, A. 2012, Kim, D.H.
2002).
Few researchers evaluate how teams learn and actually create knowledge at the
team level, or what influences this process.
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Context
How do teams create team knowledge ?
(Bennet, A. 2012)

3. Literature review
Team and team learning: definitions and key terms
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Team a collection of individuals, interdependent in their tasks, sharing responsibility for
outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social
entity embedded in a larger social system (Decuyper, S., et al. 2010)
note - service or production teams, not action teams (Marks, et al. 2002)
- established teams, not ad hoc teams
Team learning
a relative permanent change in the team’s collective level of knowledge and
skill produced by the shared experience of the team members
(Ellis in Breso et al, 2008:147)
-> cognitive processes: new shared understanding gets stored and later
retrieved (Goodman and Dabbish, 2011:338)
-> social processes: interaction of learning processes at team and
individual level (Stahl, 2000)

4. Team learning
FACTORS AFFECTING TEAM LEARNING
(Decuyper et al., 2010)
Shared mental models
Team psychological safety
Group potency or group efficacy
Cohesion
Team development and team learning dynamics
Team leadership
Interdependence
Team structure
Organizational strategy
Team member systems thinking
Literature review
Team Learning
4

5. (Edmondson, A. C. 2003)
Team
psychological
safety
Team learning
behavior
Team
performance
Team learning behaviors
- Feedback seeking
- Help seeking
- Speaking up about concerns/mistakes
- Innovative behavior
- Boundary spanning
Team Psychological Safety = a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is
safe for interpersonal risk taking (Edmondson, A. C. 1999)
Literature review
Team Psychological Safety
Team learning positively impacts performance (Edmondson, A. C. 1999)
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6. Literature review
Team Knowledge
(Wildman, J. L., et al. 2012) (Cooke, N. J. et al. 2012)
Shared cognition
= static, from structure
Team cognition
= dynamic, from interactions
Interactive Team Cognition
(ITC) theory
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7. Literature review
mental models: definitions
Individual mental model (Kim, D. H. 2002)
- a person’s view of the world
- the context in which experiences are
viewed and interpreted
- defines how knowledge is created and applied
Team mental model (Mohammed, S. et al. 2010):
the mental models of the team members, about the task,
the tools and technology, understanding of procedures,
awareness of team roles and communication patterns, and
knowledge of teammates’ skills and habits
A high level of “sharedness” of the mental models
positively impacts team processes, team performance
and team effectiveness
(Matthieu et al., 2000, Koslowski and Ilgen, 2006, Van den Bossche et al. 2010)
'
TMM
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8. Objective
Evaluate impact of team psychological safety and team learning
behaviors, on the knowledge created at the team level
Research question
How do team psychological safety and team learning affect
the creation of team knowledge ?
Research Goal
Objective and research question
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9. Proposed model
The Research Model
Team
psychological
safety TPS
Team learning
TL
Team
KNOWLEDGE
TK
H1H0
H2
H0 Teams with higher team psychological safety engage in more team learning behavior than teams with
lower team psychological safety
H1 Teams with higher team learning behavior create more team knowledge than teams with lower team
learning behavior
H2 Teams with higher team psychological safety create more team knowledge than teams with lower team
psychological safety
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10. Research set up
Emperical research experiment
Initial team mental model
Change in shared mental model
= team knowledge created
Team challenge
(learning experience)
- Asking for help
- Looking for feedback
- Speaking up about mistakes

11. Setting of the experiment:
- single organization
- 8-member engineering teams
Mixed method with 6 teams
Only team psychological safety as an element impacting team learning and team
knowledge creation
Additional research could validate this model by
- studying other teams (size, team profession, organization)
- evaluating impacts other than team psychological safety on learning
and knowledge creation in teams
Limitations
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12. -> understand how a particular element, team psychological safety, impacts
knowledge creation
=> allow organizations to develop/modify conditions to optimize knowledge
creation in teams (and in the organization)
-> understand how learning activities in a team contribute to creating team
knowledge
=> allow organizations to use learning (rather than training) approaches to
create or enhance knowledge in teams
Research significance
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13. A model to study the influence of team psychological
safety and team learning on team knowledge creation
Peter Cauwelier, Vincient Ribiere, PhD and Alex Bennet, PhD
February 7th 2014