Employee Learning from Failure: A Team-as-Resource Perspective

Abstract

Whether, and to what extent, employees learn from their failure experiences remains an unresolved issue for practitioners and scholars alike. On the one hand, failure provides individuals with opportunities for learning, whereas on the other hand, failure can also trigger defensive reactions that stifle learning. The present study expands experiential learning theories by incorporating the social context, thus offering a more comprehensive understanding of employee learning from failure. Specifically, we propose that team contexts that are psychologically safe and exhibit a well-developed transactive memory system provide important socioemotional and informational resources, enabling individual employees to seize the learning opportunities inherent in failure. Analysis of archival data on individual failure and subsequent performance in the domain of workplace creativity from 218 employees working in 42 teams supports our hypotheses. Employees are more likely to learn from their failure experiences if they work in teams with medium-to-high levels of psychological safety. Under these conditions, individual learning from failure is further stimulated by a well-developed transactive memory system. Our results also demonstrate the behavioral pathway linking failure experiences to subsequent outcomes. Interview data from 28 employees further illustrate the processes underlying these findings.

Balancing the Yin and Yang: TMT Gender Diversity, Psychological Safety, and Firm Ambidextrous Strategic Orientation in Chinese High-Tech SMEs

“…The good interrater agreement (mean rwg(j) = .97, ICC[1] = .39, ICC[2] = .66) and between-team variance by one-way ANOVA (F = 5.49, p < .01) justified aggregation of the individual ratings to the team level (Bliese, 2000;LeBreton & Senter, 2008). The team aggregation of TMT psychological safety is consistent with its conceptualization as an "emergent construct," which derives from the perception of individual members but converges and manifests itself at the team level (Cronin et al, 2011: 574), and it has been consistently used in team psychological safety research (e.g., Edmondson, 1999;Schulte et al, 2012;Wilhelm et al, 2019).…”

“…When slack is scarce, TMTs are more concerned about potential losses from failures due to the lack of financial buffers (Haleblian et al, 2012). As a result, members' different opinions and ideas about exploration and exploitation will appear more threatening to each other, and openly raising voices would involve higher interpersonal risks (Wilhelm, Richter, & Semrau, 2019). Moreover, because slack scarcity prevents TMTs from supporting more projects and strategic activities, it exacerbates the interpersonal conflicts among members vying for limited resources (Jansen, Simsek, & Cao, 2012).…”

Learning from intelligent failure: an organizational resource for school improvement

“…School social capital features for learning from intelligent failure Several aspects of failure could benefit the overall organizational performance (Wilcox et al, 2017;Wilhelm et al, 2019). Since failure is a natural part of the organizational process, leaders' tolerance of failure should be obvious and legitimate.…”

Examining failure learning in online lending: Complete failure vs. incomplete failure

“…Failures can motivate people to improve disadvantageous situations and learn lessons from prior failure experiences and, thus, can reduce the likelihood of recidivism. The value of prior failure experiences has been highlighted in employment situations [ 8 , 9 ], entrepreneurial ventures [ 10 ], cardiac surgery operations [ 11 ], and project development [ 12 ]. Scholars have argued that people can obtain knowledge from failure experiences and reduce the likelihood of future failures [ 8 , 11 ].…”

“…The value of prior failure experiences has been highlighted in employment situations [ 8 , 9 ], entrepreneurial ventures [ 10 ], cardiac surgery operations [ 11 ], and project development [ 12 ]. Scholars have argued that people can obtain knowledge from failure experiences and reduce the likelihood of future failures [ 8 , 11 ].…”