Employees' self‐efficacy and perception of individual learning in teams: The cross‐level moderating role of team‐learning behavior

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2092
• Author: Jeewhan Yoon,D. Christopher Kayes
• Published date: 01 October 2016
• Date: 01 October 2016

Employees’self-efficacy and perception of

individual learning in teams: The cross-level

moderating role of team-learning behavior

JEEWHAN YOON

1

*AND D. CHRISTOPHER KAYES

2

1

Korea University Graduate School of Management of Technology, Seoul, South Korea

2

George Washington University Schoolof Business, Washington, District of Columbia, U.S.A.

Summary Despite the importance of emp loyee learning for organizat ional effectiveness, scho lars have yet to identify

the factors that influence employees’perception of individual learning. This paper identified employees’

self-efficacy as a potential a ntecedent to their perceptio n of individual learning in th e context of team-

work. We also hypothesized that team-learning behavior had a moderating effect on the relationship

between employees’self-efficacy and their perception of individu al learning. We conducted a st udy of

236 teams working in a retail firm , comprising 236 team superviso rs and 1397 employees, and anal yzed

the data using hierarchical li near modeling. This study revea led that employees’individ ual-level self-

efficacy was positively associated with their perception of individual learning in teams. Additionally,

team-learning behaviors moderated the positive relationship between employees’self-efficacy and the per-

ception of individual learn ing. This study has theoretica l and practical implication s for a more nuanced

understanding of the percep tion of individual learning in t he context of teamwork. Copyr ight © 2016 John

Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: learning; self-efficacy; team; individual; multilevel analysis

Introduction

In order to survive and succeed in the complexity and dynamism of today’s business environment (Bresman, 2010;

Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997), organizations increasingly rely on employees being able to learn and apply their

knowledge to ever-changing situations (Argote & Ingram, 2000). Learning enhances the ability of both employees

and organizations to adapt to the environment and leads to improved performance (Kozlowski, Chao, & Jensen,

2010). Because of the importance of learning, organizations invest billions of dollars every year in formal systems

to facilitate employee learning. In the United States, for instance, organizations annually spend approximately

$150bn in learning-related activities (American Society for Training and Development, 2012). Indeed, employee

perception of individual learning, which reflects the extent to which employees perceive that they have acquired

knowledge, skills, and competencies conducive to their career development (Liu & Fu, 2011), has been proposed

as the pivotal psychological and behavioral mechanism through which individuals and organizations acquire

necessary knowledge and skills that will allow them to weather and succeed in environmental turbulence (Aldrich,

*Correspondence to: Jeewhan Yoon, Korea University Graduate School of Management of Technology, Sungbuk-gu, Anam-dong, Seoul, South

Korea. E-mail:StartRightNow@gmail.com

[Note: Correction added on 07 March 2016, after first online publication on 9 February 2016: The affiliation, correspondence address and short

biography for Dr. Jeewhan Yoon have been corrected in this version of the article.]

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 4 March 2014

Revised 17 December 2015, Accepted 29 December 2015

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1044–1060 (2016)

Published online 9 February 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2092

Research Article

1979; Campion, Medsker, & Higgs, 1993; Crossan, Lane, & White, 1999; Day, Gronn, & Salas, 2004; Noe,

Colquitt, Simmering, & Alvarez, 2003; Senge, 1990).

Although research emphasizes the importance of learning in organizations, an understanding of what vari-

ables are positively associated with employees’individual learning remains limited for two main reasons. First,

researchers have conceptualized and operationalized learning in terms of task improvement but have largely

overlooked aspects of learning that involve increased self-regulation of learning. The few studies that have

conceived of learning in terms of self-regulation have been confined to educational settings rather than work

settings (e.g., Klein, Noe, & Wang, 2006). Thus, the experiential and cognitive nature of employees’learning

in work settings has been largely overlooked. Second, extant research on individual learning has addressed

multilevel factors on a limited basis. In addition to an understanding of individual variables, a better under-

standing of the contextual factors that can set the tone for and influence the relationship between individuals’

self-efficacy and learning is also important but still lacking (Bommer, Miles, & Grover, 2003). Within team

settings, for example, learning can occur when individual members observe what other team members do

and obtain and develop knowledge and insights (Argote, Gruenfeld, & Naquin, 2001; Boone, Ganeshan, &

Hicks, 2008). However, the existing literature has generally assumed heterogeneity of team behaviors without

accounting for how the relationship between employees’self-efficacy and perceptions of individual learning

can vary across teams and how team-level factors such as team-learning behaviors can influence the relation-

ship between employees’self-efficacy and their perception of learning within the team.

Argote (1999) defined team-learning behaviors as activities by which team members collectively seek to acquire,

share, refine, or combine task-relevant knowledge through interaction with one another. A team collectively obtains

and shares knowledge (Argote, 1999; Edmondson, 1999), and this team process has been suggested to improve the

effectiveness of both the teams themselves and their organizations (Kozlowski et al., 2010; Van der Vegt, de Jong,

Bunderson, & Molleman, 2010). Thus, recent research on learning in organizations has focused on the role played

by teams as central drivers of employees’learning and performance (Argote, 1999; Bresman, 2010; Edmondson,

2002; Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006).

Accordingly, the large expenditure on learning and the promise of learning for both employees and organizational

effectiveness have presented intriguing questions for management researchers: Why do some individuals perceive

they learn better? How does a team drive the individual learning process? For more than two decades, scholars have

been urging management researchers to find a linkage between the individual learning process and a team context,

but such studies remain scarce, ignoring interactions across multiple levels of analysis—perhaps owing to the lack of

theorization, limited feasibility of accessing multilevel sources, and the complicated mechanism of the teamwork

process (Edmondson, 2011; Langfred, 2005).

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, by drawing on self-regulation theory (Bandura, 1991), the study

extends the learning and self-efficacy literatures by examining whether individual-level self-efficacy influences

employees’perceptions of individual learning. Self-regulation theory (Bandura, 1991) suggests that those with high

self-efficacy would better engage in learning to pursue high performance. The attitude–behavior literature (Azjen,

1991; Azjen & Fishbein, 1980) also suggests that efficacy is required to engage with learning. In many situations,

learning requires employees to reflect on mistakes, face challenges, or experiment with new ideas—tasks that

involve a risk of criticism or humiliation. Employees’individual self-efficacy bolsters them in the face of such risks.

Second, drawing on social learning theory (Bandura, 1977, 1997; Vygotsky, 1978), the study examines whether a

multilevel consideration is important for understanding the relationship between employees’self-efficacy and

perceptions of individual learning. Social learning theory suggests that team members’behaviors can facilitate the

process of individual learning in teams, as the observance of team-learning behaviors provides support for effica-

cious individual employees to initiate and maintain engagement with their own individual learning process. The cur-

rent study fills an important gap in our understanding of multilevel factors such as team-learning behavior that

moderate the relationship between employees’self-efficacy and their perception of individual learning in team work

settings (Chen & Kanfer, 2006; Chen, Kirkman, Kanfer, Allen, & Rosen, 2007; Cohen & Bailey, 1997; Kozlowski

& Bell, 2003).

EMPLOYEE LEARNING IN TEAMS 1045

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 37, 1044–1060 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/job