Exploring the psychological safety of R&D teams: An empirical analysis in Taiwan

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chi-Cheng Huang ◽  
Pin-Chen Jiang

AbstractR&D is uncertain work that involves the knowledge, skills, or perspectives of team members. When R&D teams develop new products or technologies, the need for psychological safety within the teams is increasingly emphasized. If R&D team members perceive that team psychological safety exists, they may be willing to offer knowledge or perspectives during the development process because they are not afraid of being rejected or embarrassed for speaking up. However, the application of the theory of team psychological safety to R&D teams is considerably limited. This study explores the antecedents and consequences of team psychological safety in R&D teams. Our research model is assessed using data from a sample of 245 team members from sixty technology R&D teams at a leading R&D institute and is analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) method. The results of this study suggest that: (1) social capital exerts a positive and significant effect on team psychological safety; (2) team psychological safety has a positive and significant impact on team performance; (3) knowledge sharing and team learning positively and significantly mediate the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance; and (4) knowledge sharing exhibits a positive and significant effect on team learning. This study also discusses the implications of team psychological safety for R&D teams.

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chi-Cheng Huang ◽  
Pin-Chen Jiang

AbstractR&D is uncertain work that involves the knowledge, skills, or perspectives of team members. When R&D teams develop new products or technologies, the need for psychological safety within the teams is increasingly emphasized. If R&D team members perceive that team psychological safety exists, they may be willing to offer knowledge or perspectives during the development process because they are not afraid of being rejected or embarrassed for speaking up. However, the application of the theory of team psychological safety to R&D teams is considerably limited. This study explores the antecedents and consequences of team psychological safety in R&D teams. Our research model is assessed using data from a sample of 245 team members from sixty technology R&D teams at a leading R&D institute and is analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) method. The results of this study suggest that: (1) social capital exerts a positive and significant effect on team psychological safety; (2) team psychological safety has a positive and significant impact on team performance; (3) knowledge sharing and team learning positively and significantly mediate the relationship between team psychological safety and team performance; and (4) knowledge sharing exhibits a positive and significant effect on team learning. This study also discusses the implications of team psychological safety for R&D teams.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Su Min Kim ◽  
Moon Jung Kim ◽  
Sung Jun Jo

PurposeThis study aimed to investigate the relationships between individual team member's perception of team psychological safety (TPS), individual team member's perception of transactive memory system (TMS), individual team member's perception of team learning behavior (TLB) and individual team member's perception of team performance (TP).Design/methodology/approachThis cross-sectional study used a paper-based questionnaire that was distributed to 500 employees in travel-related industries and responses were received from 467 employees. Finally, 394 surveys were used after excluding insincere responses. Using SPSS & AMOS version 25.0, factor analysis, correlation, path analysis and mediation analysis were performed.FindingsThe findings reveal that there is a significant association between TPS, TMS, TLB and TP, except for the specialization subdimension of TMS and reflective communication and knowledge codification subdimensions of TLB. There was no mediation role of TLB; however, credibility and task coordination subdimensions of TMS showed partial mediating effects between TPS and TP.Originality/valueThis study offers suggestions for management, emphasizing the importance of TPS. Recent and rapid organizational changes have dramatically increased employees' job insecurity, which can affect their psychological safety. Therefore, organizations should actively support employees to feel psychologically stable to improve performance by utilizing TMS and TLB among individual team members.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chi-Cheng Huang ◽  
Pin-Nan Hsieh

Team psychological safety — a non-threatening and safe climate — allows team members to express and share each other's opinions freely, and this sharing may produce more useful perspectives to induce team creativity. In a psychologically safe climate, transactive memory systems (TMSs) may be constructed for describing the specialised division of cognitive labour for solving information problems and thereby enabling team members to quickly gain and use knowledge across domains. As a consequence, further ideas may be generated within teams, increasing team creativity. Our research model is assessed using data from a sample of 110 team members from 40 research and development (R&D) teams in a leading technology company in Taiwan and analysed using the partial least squares method. The results of this study reveal that: (1) team psychological safety did not directly affect team creativity, (2) team psychological safety affects TMSs, (3) TMSs affect team creativity, and (4) TMSs fully mediate the relationship between team psychological safety and team creativity. This study also discusses the implications for team creativity.


2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joyce Rupert ◽  
Karen A. Jehn

Diversity and team learning: the effect of faultlines and psychological safety Diversity and team learning: the effect of faultlines and psychological safety J. Rupert & K.A. Jehn, Gedrag & Organisatie, volume 21, June 2008, nr. 2, pp. 184-206 In this field study on 186 members in 70 management teams, we tested the relationship between perceived faultlines and different types of team learning: task, process, and social learning. The results showed that when team members perceived faultlines, low levels of task learning were reported in the team. This relationship was mediated by psychological safety. Overall, this study extends the literature on team learning by showing that diversity faultlines are related to team learning in different ways, depending on what the subject of learning is about. In addition, psychological safety appears to be an important underlying process in the relationship between perceived faultlines and team learning.


2021 ◽  
pp. 105960112110169
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Wiese ◽  
C. Shawn Burke ◽  
Yichen Tang ◽  
Claudia Hernandez ◽  
Ryan Howell

Under what conditions do team learning behaviors best predict team performance? The current meta-analytic efforts synthesize results from 113 effect sizes and 7758 teams to investigate how different conceptualizations (fundamental, intrateam, and interteam), team characteristics (team size and team familiarity), task characteristics (interdependence, complexity, and type), and methodological characteristics (students vs. nonstudents and measurement choice) affect the relationship between team learning behaviors and team performance. Our results suggest that while different conceptualizations of team learning behaviors independently predict performance, only intrateam learning behaviors uniquely predict performance. A more in-depth investigation into the moderating conditions contradicts the familiar adage of “it depends.” The strength of the relationship between intrateam learning behaviors and team performance did not depend on team familiarity, task complexity, or sample type. However, our results suggested this relationship was stronger in larger teams, teams with moderate task interdependence, teams performing project/action tasks, and studies that use measures that capture a wider breadth of the team learning behavior construct space. These efforts suggest that common boundary conditions do not moderate this relationship. Scholars can leverage these results to develop more comprehensive theories addressing the different conceptualizations of team learning behaviors as well as providing clarity on the scenarios where team learning behaviors are most needed. Further, practitioners can use our results to develop more guided team-based policies that can overcome some of the challenges of forming and developing learning teams.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001872672110029
Author(s):  
Yuying Lin ◽  
Mengxi Yang ◽  
Matthew J Quade ◽  
Wansi Chen

How do supervisors who treat the bottom line as more important than anything else influence team success? Drawing from social information processing theory, we explore how and when supervisor bottom-line mentality (i.e. an exclusive focus on bottom-line outcomes at the expense of other priorities) exerts influence on the bottom-line itself, in the form of team performance. We argue that a supervisor’s bottom-line mentality provides significant social cues for the team that securing bottom-line objectives is of sole importance, which stimulates team performance avoidance goal orientation, and thus decreases team performance. Further, we argue performing tension (i.e. tension between contradictory needs, demands, and goals), serving as team members’ mutual perception of the confusing environment, will strengthen the indirect negative relationship between supervisor bottom-line mentality and team performance through team performance avoidance goal orientation. We conduct a path analysis using data from 258 teams in a Chinese food-chain company, which provides support for our hypotheses. Overall, our findings suggest that supervisor’s exclusive focus on the bottom-line can serve to impede team performance. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (10) ◽  
pp. 1611-1622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Won-Woo Park ◽  
Joon Yeol Lew ◽  
Eun Kyung Lee

We examined the relationship between team task knowledge diversity and team creativity, and the moderating role of team status inequality, with a focus on organizational tenure and rank inequality. By adopting an input–process–output framework, we hypothesized that teams would achieve high levels of creativity when they have a large pool of task-relevant expertise that is differentiated and specialized among team members, but the relationship would be weakened when team members have different statuses. We tested our hypotheses using data from 325 teams of employees at 10 companies in South Korea. Results showed that task knowledge diversity was positively associated with team creativity and a team's status inequality in terms of organizational tenure moderated the relationship in a negative way. Our findings contribute to the literature on team creativity by providing new insights regarding how status inequality, which is almost ubiquitous in workplaces, plays a role in a dynamic team process for creativity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 715-745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiamin Zhang ◽  
Yi Wang ◽  
Marina Yue Zhang

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the impact of cross-level interplay between team members’ and their leaders’ goal orientations (learning, performance approach, and performance avoidance) on knowledge sharing using samples from design teams in two companies in China. Our results show that team leaders’ learning goal orientation plays a critical moderating role. Specifically, team leaders’ learning goal orientation strengthens the positive relationship between team members’ learning orientation and knowledge sharing; positively moderates the relationship between team members’ performance approach orientation and knowledge sharing; and weakens the negative relationship between team members’ performance avoidance orientation and knowledge sharing. Team leaders’ performance approach orientation demonstrates a positive moderating effect when there is congruence between the performance approach orientation of leaders and members. Finally, team leaders’ performance avoidance orientation negatively moderates the relationship between team members’ learning and performance approach orientation on knowledge sharing. This research enhances our understanding of the conditions under which knowledge sharing occurs among team members, using the lens of Trait Activation Theory.


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