High-quality relationships, psychological safety, and learning from failures in work organizations

Abstract

How can organizations support employees to engage in learning from failures? In this paper, we draw on the concept of high-quality relationships to explore the relational underpinnings of learning from failures in organizations. We focus on relational coordination as a specific manifestation of high-quality relationships and examine how the relational dimensions of relational coordination-shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect-foster psychological safety and thus enable organizational members to engage in learning from failures. The results of two separate studies support our mediation model where psychological safety mediates the link between high-quality relationships and learning from failures in organizations. © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.