The relationships between team learning activities and team performance

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate how different team learning activities relate to different types of team performance as rated by team members and managers.Design/methodology/approachThe 624 respondents, working in 88 teams in seven different organizations indicate their perceptions of team learning and their performance ratings of the team. Moreover, managers in the organization are asked to evaluate the team performance.FindingsTeam member ratings of effectiveness are positively related to the boundedness and stability of the team and information processing and negatively related to information acquisition. Manager ratings of effectiveness are positively related to boundedness and stability, information processing and information storage and retrieval. Team member ratings of efficiency are positively related to information processing and negatively related to information acquisition. Manager ratings of efficiency are positively related to boundedness and stability and information storage and retrieval. Team member ratings of innovativeness are positively related to information processing, while no predictors are found for manager ratings of innovativeness.Research limitations/implicationsSince the data are cross‐sectional, the authors cannot draw conclusion about the causality between the variables. Longitudinal designs that study the sequence of team learning and team performance are called for. Furthermore, future studies might include more objective performance measures.Practical implicationsAs team learning proved to have predictive value for diverse team performance indicators, rated by team members and managers, team should carefully organise their learning process in order to enhance their performance.Originality/valueAlthough some studies have proven the significance of team learning for team performance, none have investigated which team learning activities are related to which types of performance ratings.