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Group & Organizational Learning
Overview
• Groups learn to work together• What is it that groups learn?
– Communication• Team specific vocabulary• How to communicate overall
– Shared mental models• About the task• About the team
– Momentary attributes of teammates (e.g., overload)– Stable attributes of teammates (e.g., knowledge,
skills, abilities, values, attitudes, personality)• About the environment
Learning Curves
• Groups & organizations groups get better at production, the more production they do, with most benefit early on• Developing routines & standard operating procedures to
increase efficiency• E.g. Regular meeting times
• Learning task-specific knowledge and skills • E.g., Familiarity effects
• Learning team specific knowledge, attitudes & skills• E.g., Learning teammate’s strengths & weaknesses
• Learning general teamwork knowledge, attitudes & skills• E.g., How to run a meeting, delegation, planning, info-
sharing
Learning occurs with production:Empirical learning curves
• Reduction in labor hours as cumulative output doubles– Large variability in improvement– Median is 20% decrease with doubling of production
• Increase in quality as cumulative output doubles
Learning curve: Unit cost of production declines with increased
production, but at a declining rate
Efficiency or Effectiveness=Constant x Cumulative Production-b
Typically ~20% decrease in cost as cumulative
production doubles (with substantial variation)
Learning Curve: Formula
Learning curves happen at multiple levels
• Organization/Firm• Factory/Location• Shift within a plant• Work group• Individual worker
Surgeons Performing Heart Bypass Surgery
• Cardiac surgeons with privileges at multiple hospitals
• What is the impact of more experience?– Overall?– Within a hospital– Between hospital
• All coronary artery bypass surgeries, PA, 1994
Average Probability of Mortality After Surgery 1.770%
Impact of 1 SD increase in total surgeries -0.015%
Impact of 1 SD increase in same hospital surgeries -0.018%
Impact of 1 SD increase in different hospital surgeries -0.001%
Huckman, R., Pisano, G., Research, D. o., & School, H. B. (2006). The Firm Specificity of Individual Performance: Evidence from Cardiac Surgery. Management Science, 52(4), 473.
Predicting efficiency of an operation from experience of hospital, team & docs
• Tested in context of total joint replacement surgery groups (hip & elbow)
• The more each individual in the team has performed the surgery, a team have performed the surgery together & the more they do this in a hospital that does lots of surgeries, the more quickly the operation goes
Reagans, R., Argote, L., & Brooks, D. (2005). Individual experience and experience working together: Predicting learning rates from knowing who knows what and knowing how to work together. Management Science, 51(6), 869-881.
Joint Replacement Surgery(Reagans, Argote, Brooks, 2005)
• Controls are sensibleOperations take longer with older males, hip (vs. elbow) replacement, tumors, complications
• Experience improves speed of surgery
• Organizational: 100 transplants 18% reduction in time to complete (~34 minutes)
• Team: 10 transplants together 5% reduction (~ 10 min)
• Individual: Experience increases time for 1st five transplants and then decreases time
Familiarity in Software Development
Baseline Model + Familiarity Vars + Interaction Vars ColVariable Coefficient P-Value Coefficient P-Value Coefficient P-Value VIF
Software Size -0.044 0.003 -0.057 <0.001 -0.051 0.008 2.119Complexity -0.043 <0.001 -0.046 <0.001 -0.066 <0.001 1.348Team Size -0.171 0.005 -0.157 0.008 -0.282 <0.001 1.714Geographic Dispersion (0,1) -0.383 0.018 -0.344 0.029 -0.422 0.013 1.228Repairs (0,1) -0.322 0.001 -0.348 <0.001 -0.364 <0.001 1.038New Development MR (0,1) -0.489 <0.001 -0.375 0.001 -0.303 0.009 1.532MR Start Date (yrs from 1st MR) -0.074 0.184 -0.182 0.001 -0.167 0.003 1.125Priority (1=lowest; 4=highest) 0.073 0.340 0.095 0.201 0.126 0.086 1.461Development Evenness 2.000 <0.001 1.731 <0.001 1.594 <0.001 1.243Task Familiarity (Deltas) 0.163 <0.001 0.364 <0.001 3.351Team Familiarity (MRs) 0.082 <0.001 0.182 <0.001 3.582Team Fam x Task Fam -0.069 <0.001 3.802Task Fam x Software Size 0.004 0.744 2.004Task Fam x Complexity -0.047 <0.001 3.259Team Fam x Team Size 0.106 0.002 2.101Team Fam x Geogr Dispersion 0.104 0.012 1.503
N 1,110 1,110 1,110Adjusted R2 0.151 0.197 0.225R2 0.158 0.205 0.236Change in R2 0.158 0.047 0.031F test for change in R2 23.01 32.256 8.797p-value of F test <0.001 <0.001 <0.001Condition Index (collinearity) 19.773 19.964 20.610
• Task familiarity = mean # software changes team members participated in past• Team familiarity = mean # of software changes pairs jointly participated in• DV = Time to make a change (reversed: high = good)
When does familiarity help most?
Interaction Plot Task Familiarity x Number of Modules
-2.70
-2.60
-2.50
-2.40
-2.30
-2.20
-2.10
-2.00
-1.90
-1.80
-1.70
0.01 0.87 1.73 2.60 3.46
Task Familiarity
Per
form
ance
= -
LN
MR
Dev
Tim
e
Low Number of Modules
High Number of Modules
Interaction Plot Team Familiarity x Geographic Dispersion
-3.30
-3.10
-2.90
-2.70
-2.50
-2.30
-2.10
-1.90
0.01 0.87 1.73 2.60 3.46
Team Familiarity
Per
form
ance
= -
LN
MR
Dev
Tim
e
Co-Located
Distributed
Interaction Plot Team Familiarity x Team Size
-3.30
-3.10
-2.90
-2.70
-2.50
-2.30
-2.10
-1.90
0.01 0.87 1.73 2.60 3.46
Team Familiarity
Per
form
ance
= -
LN
MR
Dev
Tim
e
Low Team Size
High Team Size
• When communication is more difficult
More team members Geographically distributed teams
When task is smaller (surprise)
What are the factors responsible for team & organizational learning
Factors that change with experience & can plausibly cause improvements in efficiency or effectiveness of production
– Individual learning, especially tacit knowledge– Development of routines & their refinement– Automation & refinement of equipment
Speed for new minimally invasive cardiac surgery
Pisano, G. P., Bohmer, R. M., & Edmondson, A. C. (2001). Organizational differences in rates of learning: Evidence from the adoption of minimally invasive cardiac surgery. Management Science, 47(6), 752-768.
Time to complete surgery by hospital experience
• Overall learning at hospital level (5% improvement with doubling of # of operations)
• Large differences in rate of learning btw hospitals(M goes from 500 minutes to 132, while average is fm 290 minutes to 210))
Why did hospital M learn faster than a typical team?
Hospital M learned faster than average• Team hand-picked for training by adopting surgeon
based on prior experience working together
• Adopting surgeon met with all other surgeons in cardiac unit. Perfusionist met with operating room nurse & anesthesiologist to discuss procedure. Surgeon has weekly discussions with cardiologists.
• Initial team performed first 15 operations before any rotation. New team members had to observe 4 & be mentored on 2 before joining.
• Adopting surgeon encouraged team coordination (e.g., feedback)
Hospital R learned slower than average• Initial team based on who was available
• No attempt to introduce procedure to other clinical groups or meeting to discuss cases ahead of time.
• Only 3 of 4 in first operation had training. Turnover in next 6 cases.
• Little teamwork. "We don't have any real teams here. It's just who gets assigned on any given day” “The nurses are interchangeable. We know our ‘little jog’ and don’t really know what the other people are doing.
Pre
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ross
dep
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Sta
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Tea
mw
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What is it that groups learn from working together?
• Lessons from the Ginnett paper on leadership in flight crews:
– Explicit expectations about procedures & rationale– Explicit division of labor/hierarchy – Demonstrating personal attributes– Demonstrating positive attributes trust – Development of personal social relationships– Transactive memory: Knowledge of what each crew
member is good at
Team vs. Individual Level Training• Groups trained to assemble a
radio– Subjects trained individually– Or in a group training
• Tested in group setting• Group trained together did
better than those trained individual
Liang, D., Moreland, R., & Argote, L. (1995). Group versus individual training and group performance: The mediating role of transactive memory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 384-393.
Argote & Moreland: Subsequent research
• Motivation isn’t the cause• People trained individually & then given a group
building exercise were no better than people trained alone
• Learning to work in teams-in-general isn’t the cause• People trained in one group and then moved to
another were no better than people trained alone
Moreland, R. L., Argote, L., & Krishnan, R. (2002). Training people to work in groups. Theory and research on small groups, 37-60.
Transactive Memory
• Individual expertise is limited• Learning who knows what in an organization is
generally useful– Basis of division of expertise & task assignment, for
coordination– Provides access to resources external to oneself
Learn Who Knows WhatLiang, Argote, Moreland
• Only strong effect comes from individuals training & performing with their initial group• Transactive memory may
be one cause• Groups trained together
know each others strength & weakness & allows them to assign tasks accurately
• This accuracy predicted performance
• Mediation analysis suggests that knowing who knows what accounts for effects of group training
Grouptraining Errors
Assign tasksappropriately
Groupidentity
-4.28
1.66 -2.82
1.30
-5.61
Summary: What teams learn as they work together• Group-specific knowledge
– Task– People– Environment
• General teamwork– Ways to organize– Planning– Appropriate amount of communication– Team-appropriate attitudes
• Learning at both the individual and group levels– Transactive memory: e.g., Individual manager learns that person A is good
with complex problems but, doesn’t finish projects on deadline– Group learning:
• E.g., Routines such as aviation checklists– Technology: e.g., Group decides to physically organize so people who
coordinate most are close by
Familiarity is not always positive
• Groups can also stagnate: E.g., productivity of a research group peaks after 3-5 years of being together
• Katz (1982) – Performance (rated by managers) of 50 R&D teams– Tenure = average time people worked in group.
Communication as a mediator?
• Communication is correlated with tenure– Communication is
associated with project performance
– Less internal & external communication at beginning & end of group