Understanding team learning dynamics over time

Abstract

Organizations depend on the learning capabilities of teams in order to be competitive in today's information-laden business landscape. Hence, it is not surprising that there have been tremendous efforts made to understand team learning within the past two decades. These efforts, however, have produced a cluttered literature-base that overlooks a fundamental aspect of team learning: How do teams learn over time? In this paper, we first synthesize the literature to develop a shared vocabulary to understand team learning dynamics. We then leverage research investigating how teams operate within the context of time (e.g., team development, performance cycles, emergent state development) and combine it with the extant team learning literature in developing an unfolding model of team learning. This comprehensive model addresses a noticeable gap in the extant literature by illustrating how teams learn over time. Finally, we put forth three grand challenges for the future of team learning research.