An empirical examination of personal learning within the context of teams

• Author: Susan E. Jackson,Yuan Jiang,Saba Colakoglu
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Published date: 01 July 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2058

An empirical examination of personal learning

within the context of teams

YUAN JIANG

1

*, SUSAN E. JACKSON

2

AND SABA COLAKOGLU

3,4

1

Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

2

HRM Department, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, U.S.A.

3

Campbell School of Business, Berry College, Mount Berry, Georgia, U.S.A.

4

Department of Management and Strategy, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey

Summary Using a sample of 588 employees in 59 work teams, we tested a model that situates personal learning within

the context of teams, viewing it as a joint function of teams’leadership climate (i.e., transformational leader-

ship) and task characteristics (i.e., task routineness and task interdependence). Consistent with our hypothe-

ses, we found that the positive relationships between transformational leadership climate and the two

dimensions of personal learning (relational job learning and personal skill development) were moderated

by the nature of the teams’tasks. Specifically, transformational leadership climate was more strongly associ-

ated with personal learning for members of teams working on tasks that were less routine, rather than more

routine. However, no significant moderation was found for leadership climate and task interdependence.

Our findings underscore the importance of taking into account the contextual conditions within which lead-

ership influence occurs while also demonstrating the potential role that leaders can play in promoting em-

ployees’personal learning. Overall, our study bolsters theories that conceptualize adult learning as a

transaction between people and their social environments and points to a practical need to match leadership

styles with team task characteristics to unleash transformational leadership effects. Copyright © 2015 John

Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: adult learning; transformational leadership; task routineness; task interdependence

Learning refers to a relatively permanent change in a person’s repertoire of knowledge and skills produced by the

creation of new, or the alteration of existing connections between knowledge structures (Noe, Clarke, & Klein,

2014; Weiss, 1990). Adult learning theories often emphasize a person’s transactions with their social environment

as the most important conduit through which learning takes place (Kolb 1984; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Rather than

viewing learning as the result of one-way information flows from experts to novices, adult learning theories empha-

size the value of a person’s active involvement in knowledge creation and transformative personal experiences

(Kolb, 1984). Studies of workplace learning reflect this perspective by emphasizing informal learning that occurs

on the job (e.g., Bear et al., 2008; Van der Heijden, Boon, Van der Klink, & Meijs, 2009) and the development

of social “soft”skills such as communication and emotional intelligence (e.g., Blain, 2012; SHRM, 2014).

Within organizations, teams have become one of the most salient, if not the most salient, aspect of employees’

social environments as employers increasingly rely on team-based structures to more efficiently organize produc-

tion, facilitate innovation, and better serve customers (Cohen & Bailey, 1997; Kozlowski & Bell, 2013; Mathieu,

Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008). Consequently, learning that occurs within work teams can promote ongoing

self-development (Kozlowski & Bell, 2008). Yet to date, investigations of workplace learning have focused more

on formal training and development programs (Aguinis & Kraiger, 2009; Kraiger & Ford, 2006; Ragins & Kram,

2007), with the assumption that workplace learning mostly involves acquisition of task-related declarative job

knowledge. The acquisition of declarative job knowledge is undoubtedly important, but as the boundaries of jobs

*Correspondence to: Yuan Jiang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Antai College of Economics and Management, 1954 Huashan Road, Shanghai,

200030, China. E-mail: yuanjiang8@gmail.com

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 06 April 2014

Revised 04 September 2015, Accepted 21 September 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 654–672 (2016)

Published online 5 November 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2058

Research Article

have blurred and the importance of broadly construed organizational roles has increased (e.g., Grant & Parker, 2009;

Murphy & Jackson, 1999), so too has the need to improve our understanding of the organizational conditions that

promote learning that enables employees to perform effectively across a broad range of social contexts.

Through teamwork, employees can improve their personal understanding of how organizational positions and

jobs are interconnected with one another and develop skills that improve interpersonal interactions and task perfor-

mance (Lankau & Scandura, 2002). Such skills are valued by organizations not only because they can contribute to

job performance and team effectiveness (Hackman, 2002) but also because they promote employee well-being and

may help reduce costly employee turnover (e.g., Dong, Seo & Bartol, 2014). Thus, research that sheds new light on

informal personal learning holds considerable promise for improving the design of effective learning environments

(cf. Kukenberger, Mathieu, & Ruddy, 2015; Liu & Fu, 2011).

In this study, we focus on transformational leadership in teams as a facilitator of personal learning—based on

the premise that novel and stimulating experiences can be generated by transformational leaders when team tasks

are non-routine and interdependent. Further, the influence of leaders can be diffused among team members

through social contagion, thereby creating a leadership climate that fosters personal learning in teams. Thus,

the choice of team-level characteristics examined in this study is based on the central tenet of adult learning

theories that emphasizes transformative personal and social experiences triggered by contextual conditions (Kolb,

1984; Kolb & Kolb, 2005).

Our study contributes to current knowledge on adult learning in two ways: First, this study adds to an emerging

stream of work that seeks to understand how work team contexts can facilitate or inhibit workplace learning (e.g.,

Edmondson, 1999; Kukenberger et al., 2015; Liu & Fu, 2011). Consistent with a constructivist and experiential view

of adult learning (Kolb, 1984; Kolb & Kolb, 2005; Lave & Wegner, 1991), we construe teamwork as a social con-

text that provides opportunities for personal learning when the task and leadership climate shape a cycle of personal

experience, self-reflection, and readjustment. Further, extending prior research that has focused on the potential for

leaders to promote learning by building high quality relationships with individuals (e.g., Carmeli & Gittell , 2009;

Ouweneel, Taris, van Zolingen, & Schreurs, 2009; Williams, Scandura, & Gavin, 2009) and creating autonomous

and empowering team processes (e.g., Edmondson, 1999; Kukenberger et al., 2015; Liu & Fu, 2011), we examine

leadership as a process that can promote personal learning by transforming team members’goals, values, and work

experiences, as the defining feature of transformational leadership is to transform followers by elevating followers’

needs for achievement and self-actualization. As we explain next, experiential theories of adult learning serve as the

theoretical base of our model, summarized in Figure 1, for elaborating a new understanding of how transformative

conditions present in work teams might contribute to personal learning.

Figure 1. Hypothesized model

PERSONAL LEARNING IN TEAMS 655

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 654–672 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job