Status of my PhD research and model creation around team learning and team knowledge creation

1. The influence of team psychological safety on team
knowledge creation: A comparative study between
Thai and French teams
Peter Cauwelier
peter@asioconsulting.com
2nd year student
1June 23rd, 2013

2. Agenda
1. Problem statement
2. Research objectives
3. Brief literature review
4. Research paradigm
5. Conceptual framework
6. Research design
7. Data collection
8. Limitations
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3. Problem statement
Team psychological safety has been shown to impact
team learning behaviors. Team learning behaviors
influence team performance, although the scope of
team performance is often left vague.
Learning leads to knowledge.
There has been little research to evaluate how team
psychological safety impacts the knowledge that is
created, stored and reused at the team level.
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4. Research Objectives
4
The purpose of this research is to evaluate the
relationship between team psychological safety
(leading to team learning behavior) and the knowledge
created at the team level.
Knowledge and teams are two crucial elements
organizations count on to maintain or develop their
competitive advantage.
Confirming the link between team psychological safety
and team knowledge creation will bring valuable
information to organizations about the necessary
conditions to ensure teams create knowledge.

5. Brief literature review
5Psychological Safety, Trust, and Learning in Organizations: A Group-level Lens
Amy Edmondson, 2003
Team
psychological
safety
Team learning
behavior
Team
performance
Antecedents to team psychological
safety:
- Team leader behavior
- Informal group dynamics
- Trust and respect
- Use of practice fields
- Supportive organizational context
Elements of team learning behavior
- 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
Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams
Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly; Jun 1999

6. Brief literature review
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(Bennet and Bennet 2012)
LEARNING LEADS TO KNOWLEDGE CREATION

7. Brief literature review
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TEAM KNOWLEDGE
Team Knowledge Research: Emerging Trends and Critical Needs
Jessica L. Wildman, Amanda L. Thayer, Davin Pavlas (2012)
Shared cognition
= static, from structure
Team cognition
= dynamic, from interactions
Interactive Team Cognition
(ITC) theory
(Nancy Cooke 2012)

8. Research paradigm: Mixed methods
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9. Conceptual framework
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TEAMS IN FRANCE
TEAMS IN THAILAND
Team learning
behavior
Team
psychological
safety
Team
knowledge
creation
H0 H1
H2
H3
“mediating variable”
(culture)
H4
“control variable”
(culture)

10. Conceptual framework
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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
H3 Psychological safety in teams in Thailand have a more pronounced effect on the
creation of team knowledge than in France:
- low psychological safety has a very strong negative impact in Thailand
- low psychological safety has a moderate negative impact in France
- high psychological safety has a very strong positive impact in Thailand
- high psychological safety has a moderate positive impact in France
H4 Elements affecting team psychological safety are different between cultures,
and their relative importance is different

11. Research design
The research will be conducted in teams with 5-8 members, in
engineering departments in Thailand and France, from the same
organization.
The level of team psychological safety will be evaluated in each
team. Each team will engage in a 2-part team challenge:
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training of individual
team members on different
tasks
team
challenge
part 1
assessment
team
challenge
part 2
assessment
assess team psychological
safety in the team
Example of challenge: designing and building a model rocket

12. Data collection
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Step 1
Evaluate team
psychological safety
Quantitative
Qualitative
Step 3
Team performs challenge
and researcher evaluates team
learning behaviors
N/A
Researchers will codify and
count the occurrence of
learning behaviors
in each team challenge from the
video recordings; opposite
behaviors (negative learning
behaviors) will equally
be codified and counted*
Before the challenge, team
members are trained on
distinct skills necessary to
perform the task
Questionnaires filled by team members
Instruments exist in Edmondson 1999
and have been further developed by other
resources*
Individual interviews, questions to
be developed
Questions will focus on antecedents of
team psychological safety and evaluate if
any differences exist between teams in 2
countries
* existing instruments or methodologies
Performance level of the team
challenge (part 1)
Team interview session, questions to
be developed
Questions will focus on the learning
experience, and the extent to which
team members have learned about
themselves, the team members, the
task
Step 4
Assessment
Step 2

13. Data collection
Quantitative
Qualitative
Step 5
Team performs 2nd part of challenge
and researcher evaluates team
learning behaviors, and re-use of knowledge
Note: in this 2nd part, researchers will look out to see how
team members learned from each other in the 1st session, to
see if knowledge had been created in this first session, and
if this knowledge is re-used
Step 6
Assessment
Performance level of the team challenge
(part 2)
Team interview session, questions to
be developed
Questions will focus on new knowledge that the
team members have discovered in the
challenge, about themselves, the team
members, the task … in particular the extent to
to which team members have been able to
reuse knowledge created in the 1st session
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* existing instruments or methodologies
N/A
Researchers will codify and
count the occurrence of
learning behaviors
in each team challenge from the
video recordings; opposite
behaviors (negative learning
behaviors) will equally
be codified and counted*

14. Limitations
The main limitations of this research are related to the
setting of the experiment:
- teams in 1 organization only
- Thailand and France only
- engineering teams only
This research follows a mixed method paradigm and the
sampling size is limited to 2x3 teams.
Additional research with a larger variation of team
background and cultural settings could help for these
limitations.
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