Learning strategies and performance in organizational teams

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, February 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-103).(cont.) shows that vicarious learning is positively associated with performance. I argue that vicarious team learning is an under-explored dimension of what makes teams and organizations competitive. The chapter concludes by pointing toward a contingency theory of team learning in which the effectiveness of a team learning strategy depends on characteristics in the team's task environment.This dissertation addresses the subject of team learning strategies and their performance effects in three independent but related chapters. A common theme is the notion that theorizing about team learning as constituted by a set of distinct strategies can improve our understanding of how teams learn, and how it influences performance. The first chapter explores team learning in an inductive study of six teams in one large pharmaceutical firm. I find that many of these teams engage in vicarious team learning--the activities by which a team learns key aspects of its task from the similar experiences of others outside the team--rather than experiential team learning. I detail the nature of vicarious team learning in a model including three component processes: identification, translation, and application. The second chapter reviews the literature on team learning and concludes that it has largely been treated as a uniform construct. Drawing on organizational learning theory, social learning theory, and the literature on the management of innovation and entrepreneurship, I propose that teams learn by deploying at least three different strategies: experiential learning, contextual learning, and vicarious learning. I use the example of a team facing a particularly difficult learning environment to illustrate the significance of viewing team learning as a multi-dimensional construct. The final chapter examines different team learning strategies, and vicarious learning in particular, as a means to understanding learning and performance differences across teams. Vicarious learning is conceptualized as an integral part of how teams learn. A field study of 43 teams in the pharmaceutical industry is used to develop and test the construct andby P. Henrik M. Bresman.Ph.D

Vicarious Team Learning

Presentation on vicarious team learnin

Team Learning Strategies for Enterprise Transformation: The Case of Vicarious Learning

Presentation on vicarious team learning for enterprise transformatio

The Joint Influence of Intra- and Inter-Team Learning Processes on Team Performance: A Constructive or Destructive Combination?

In order for teams to build a shared conception of their task, team learning is crucial. Benefits of intra-team learning have been demonstrated in numerous studies. However, teams do not operate in a vacuum, and interact with their environment to execute their tasks. Our knowledge of the added value of inter-team learning (team learning with external parties) is limited. Do both types of team learning compete over limited resources, or do they form a synergistic combination? We aim to shed light on the interplay between intra- and inter-team learning in relation to team performance, by including adaptive and transformative sub-processes of intra-team learning. A quantitative field study was conducted among 108 university teacher teams. The joint influence of intra- and inter-team learning as well as structural (task interdependence) and cultural (team efficacy) team characteristics on self-perceived and externally rated team performance were explored in a path model. The results showed that adaptive intra-team learning positively influenced self-perceived team performance, while transformative intra-team learning positively influenced externally rated team performance. Moreover, intra-team and inter-team learning were found to be both a constructive and a destructive combination. Adaptive intra-team learning combined with inter-team learning led to increased team performance, while transformative intra-team learning combined with inter-team learning hurt team performance. The findings demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between both the scope (intra- vs. inter-team) and the level (adaptive vs. transformative) of team learning in understanding team performance

External sourcing of core technologies and the architectural dependency of teams

How do teams complete a task involving critical knowledge that is both complex and external to the team itself? This is a task characterized by a particularly difficult tradeoff between external search for important knowledge on one hand and internal coordination on the other. I explore the question in an inductive study of new product development teams in the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, I investigate different approaches to managing the important task of core technology sourcing (the identification, evaluation and integration of an external technology that constitutes a core subsystem of the product). This research resulted in two key findings. First, in contrast to previous research suggesting that high-performing teams do not engage in any significant external search for complex knowledge, or that such search should be limited to the early stage of a team's work, the study finds that a positive team outcome is associated with continuous deployment of many search modalities of different kinds. By coupling this search behavior with intensive communication and flexible decision-making, internal coordination problems are offset and the benefits of external search are leveraged. Second, this research shows that search behavior is significantly dependent on factors external to the team. Specifically, search behavior is enabled by factors in the task environment, such as how structures and processes are designed at the organizational level, and by the knowledge handed down by previous teams. I develop the concept of "architectural dependency" to capture how the behavior of core technology sourcing teams is dependent on factors configured across three fundamental dimensions (the team, the task environment, the behavior of previous teams), and importantly, the way that they are linked together. These architectures of factors are molded only slowly over time, and I found this change to be driven by the overarching organizational regime adopted at the organizational level. I conclude by discussing conditions under which architectural dependency may be useful as an interpretive key to team behavior in settings other than core technology sourcingOrganizational Behavior, Teams, Core Technology Sourcing,

External sourcing of core technologies and the architectural dependency of teams

How do teams complete a task involving critical knowledge that is both complex and external to the team itself? This is a task characterized by a particularly difficult tradeoff between external search for important knowledge on one hand and internal coordination on the other. I explore the question in an inductive study of new product development teams in the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, I investigate different approaches to managing the important task of core technology sourcing (the identification, evaluation and integration of an external technology that constitutes a core subsystem of the product). This research resulted in two key findings. First, in contrast to previous research suggesting that high-performing teams do not engage in any significant external search for complex knowledge, or that such search should be limited to the early stage of a team's work, the study finds that a positive team outcome is associated with continuous deployment of many search modalities of different kinds. By coupling this search behavior with intensive communication and flexible decision-making, internal coordination problems are offset and the benefits of external search are leveraged. Second, this research shows that search behavior is significantly dependent on factors external to the team. Specifically, search behavior is enabled by factors in the task environment, such as how structures and processes are designed at the organizational level, and by the knowledge handed down by previous teams. I develop the concept of "architectural dependency" to capture how the behavior of core technology sourcing teams is dependent on factors configured across three fundamental dimensions (the team, the task environment, the behavior of previous teams), and importantly, the way that they are linked together. These architectures of factors are molded only slowly over time, and I found this change to be driven by the overarching organizational regime adopted at the organizational level. I conclude by discussing conditions under which architectural dependency may be useful as an interpretive key to team behavior in settings other than core technology sourcin

Managing the post-acquisition process: How the human integration and task integration processes interact to foster value creation

The paper reports a study of the post-acquisition integration process in three foreign acquisitions made by Swedish multinationals. Detailed interview data and questionnaire responses in both acquiring and acquired firms are presented. The sub-processes of task integration and human integration are separated out and it is shown that effective integration in these cases was achieved through a two-phase process. In phase one, task integration led to a satisficing solution that limited the interaction between acquired and acquiring units, while human integration proceeded smoothly and led to cultural convergence and mutual respect. In phase two, there was renewed task integration built on the success of the human integration that had been achieved, which led to much greater interdependencies between acquired and acquiring units

Knowledge transfer in international acquisitions.

Abstract In this Retrospective, we summarise and discuss the findings of our 1999 JIBS paper ''Knowledge transfer in international acquisitions'', and we consider how research in this area has evolved over the last decade. The paper's key contribution was to show how the post-acquisition integration process in a sample of three international acquisitions led to the creation of a ''social community'', characterised by two-way knowledge-sharing between the acquirer and acquired companies. We discuss how the timing of this publication, as an early contribution to the knowledge-based perspective on the firm, helped its visibility; and we consider the boundary conditions around our findings