Team Learning

Individual learning is a prerequisite for team learning (Senge, 1990). If the individual team members do not leam, then the team as a whole cannot learn (Senge, 1990). There are a growing number of studies that examine learning and transformation in a shared group experience (Taylor, 1997) as well as collective learning by teams (Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).

Project participants frequently engaged in team learning activities to create new understanding or transform existing knowledge into new understanding. This type of team learning has been described in Senge’s (1990) work. In it he shows how generative team learning is supported by collaborative sharing of knowledge for building the intellectual capacity of the whole team.

Dixon (1994) states that explicit and tacit forms of knowledge are complementary and, when communicated, can contribute to team or collective learning. The design process may be considered a mutual learning process in which all participants are both teachers and learners, and the design situation itself is a source of new knowledge. A client or user seeks to grasp and understand the situation together with the professional project team, calling for a greater measure of participation in developing the design (Gray et al., 1994; Kemohan et al., 1992; Lipman and Harris, 1998; Margolin, 1997; Reich et al., 1996).

Horvath et al. (1996) view team learning as a collective endeavour to make sense of actions and experiences. Dechant and Marsick (1993, p. 40) describe team learning in this way: “members must put together an integrated body of team-held knowledge and skills and then use it as a basis for thinking and acting”. They go on to describe the relationship between individual and team learning based on their research into team learning: “team learning is different from individual learning because it is a shared experience with shared outcomes” (Dechant and Marsick, 1993, p. 40). According to Senge (1990, p. 236), the definition o f team learning is “the process of aligning and developing the capacity o f a team to create the results its members truly desire”.

Purser et al. (1992) introduce the idea of deliberation to capture the reflective and communicative behaviour that appears to be characteristic of team learning. Cross­ functional teams are fertile grounds for learning, although they vary greatly in the extent to which they are able to establish the dynamics to support it (Purser et al., 1992). Takeuchi and Nonaka (1989) find that learning can potentially occur within a

project team along two dimensions: across different levels (individual, team, and organisational) and across multiple functions or disciplines. Team learning occurs when knowledge is shared among team members and incorporated into collective practices; it primarily emerges either from collective work or from team efforts to import knowledge in order to solve problems and/or achieve goals. The same forces drive learning across teams. Cross-team learning or inter-team learning can also occur when teams share their internal approaches with one another.

Team learning is viewed as a combined process of action and reflection that results in collective and observable outcomes of new knowledge, beliefs and behaviours (Watkins and Marsick, 1990). Team learning theory actually draws on concepts from both individual and organisational learning (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Concepts from organisational learning, such as interpretative systems and sensemaking, have been translated into team learning theories, although their application is not well developed (Horvath et al., 1996). Weick (1979) suggests that learning at the collective level requires that organisations be seen as interpretative systems where individuals and groups make sense of and adapt to their environments. When this is applied to the collective, the interpretation rests on the social exchange o f individuals (Gioia and Sims, 1986) and occurs as retrospective sensemaking (Daft and Weick, 1984). By focusing on the learning role of a group or team, it should be possible to reveal the potential contribution that team learning can make to organisational learning as a whole. This is consistent with Senge’s (1990, p. 5) observation that “team learning is vital because teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modem organisations”. This is where “the rubber meets the road; unless teams can learn, the organisation cannot learn” (Senge, 1990, p. 5).

Even if people are the basic learning unit, it is essential to understand the collective process that links them to each other and to their organisation (Crossan et al., 1996). Team learning implies that some persons or teams co-operate in order to accomplish something, which might have been impossible for one person. When individuals work together, they contribute their individual and specific knowledge, but they also develop a collective learning, o f no use to a single individual. It is rather how the team works together that constitutes the collective knowledge. This means that the sum of individual knowledge is different to that of collective knowledge (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990). Team learning could thus be defined as the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience, increasing the team’s capacity to accomplish a common objective. It is possible to distinguish individual and team learning as the transfer and transformation process through which individual learning is retained by a team - when new knowledge is developed by an individual and transmitted to another individual in the same team (Timlon, 1997).

The above literature review attempts to cover most o f the literature that fuels the research. The next section o f this chapter develops a conceptual framework for knowledge creation in the particular setting of multidisciplinary project teams.

2.4

Conceptual Framework and Research Questions of