1. Group & Organizational Learning

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. Learning curves happen at multiple levels Organization/Firm Factory/Location Shift within a plant Work group Individual worker

7. 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 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.

8. 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.

9. Joint Replacement Surgery (Reagans, Argote, Brooks, 2005) Controls are sensible –Operations 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 1 st five transplants and then decreases time

10. Joint Replacement Surgery (Reagans, Argote, Brooks, 2005) Controls are sensible Operations 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 1 st five transplants and then decreases time

11. Familiarity in Software Development 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)

12. When does familiarity help most? When communication is more difficult More team membersGeographically distributed teams When task is smaller (surprise)

13. 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

14. 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))

15. Why did hospital M learn faster than a typical team? Hospital M learns much faster –Team hand-picked for training by adopting surgeon based on prior experience working together –High levels of cross departmental cooperation from the beginning E.g., Perfusionist met with operating room nurse & anesthesiologist to discuss procedure. Surgeon has weekly discussions with cardiologists. –Early cases carefully managed by adopting surgeon E.g., 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 cooperation within team E.g, Adopting surgeon encouraged team feedback

16. 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. Preparation Cross dept coordination Stability Teamwork

17. 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

18. Learning roles & responsibilities Devadas & Argote – Effects of turnover in groups with more or less structure –Lab experiment – Origami task –Turnover: 3-person groups with constant or changing membership –Structure: Group given detailed instructions about role & procedures (structure) or not (no structure) –Turnover harms group with least structure the most Relative task performance Rao, R. D., & Argote, L. (2006). Organizational learning and forgetting: The effects of turnover and structure. European Management Review, 3(2), 77-85.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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

22. Learn Who Knows What Liang, 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 Group training Errors Assign tasks appropriately Group identity -4.28 1.66-2.82 1.30 -5.61

23. 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

24. 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.

25. Communication as a mediator? Communication is correlated with tenure –Communication is associated with project performance –Less internal & external communication at beginning & end of group